A HOST of Bollywood stars bid farewell on Monday (October 21) to legendary Indian filmmaker Yash Chopra, the “king of romance”, who was cremated in Mumbai after dying in hospital at the age of 80.
Actors who had worked closely with Chopra, such as veteran Amitabh Bachchan and heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan, attended a private funeral at a crematorium in the city.
Chopra’s body had earlier been placed in his studio, allowing the public to pay their respects before his final journey.
Born in the now-Pakistani city of Lahore in 1932, the youngest of eight children, Chopra began his career in Bollywood as an assistant to his older film-making brother, BR Chopra.
He founded his own production house, Yash Raj films, in the 1970s and became best-known for his romantic and emotional films, with a fondness for picturesque foreign locations, especially in Switzerland.
His 1995 classic Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride), is the longest-running movie in Indian cinemas, still drawing audiences to the big screen.
Chopra worked until the final months of his life and his last film Jab Tak Hai Jaan (As Long As I Am Alive), featuring Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif, will be released on November 13.
Chopra told Khan in a televised interview to mark his 80th birthday in September that he was retiring.
He was admitted to Lilavati hospital in Mumbai on October 13 after being diagnosed with dengue – a common mosquito-borne viral infection for which there is no cure, and which is fatal in a small number of cases.
