Key Points

Saira took to Instagram, where she shared a string of monochrome pictures featuring her and the legendary actor from their engagement day.

Reminiscing about the day, she wrote in the caption section: "What, indeed, is the purest love, if not faith? A faith so deep in one's beloved that all inclination to question, to doubt, or to weigh affection upon scales of reason, simply dissolves."

"It was upon this very day, the 2nd of October, 1966, that my heart bound itself irrevocably to my one true love my dearest Dilip Sahib. And from that moment hence, I never questioned, nor did I find reason to. In times of happiness, in seasons of grief, and in the quietude of our everyday hours, I simply loved."

She talked about how Dilip Kumar declared what love was to him.

"For love, as my Sahib himself once so poignantly declared "Pyaar mein mohabbat hai, mohabbat mein junoon hai, aur junoon mein zindagi" is not a matter of conditions, but of surrender."

Calling it the foundation, Saira added: "It is the very foundation upon which all else rests. It bears no burden, harbours no suspicion, entertains no expectation. Instead, it grants the sweetest liberty of all the liberty to devote oneself entirely."

"And in that devotion, I discovered the essence of love as it was meant to be: unconditional and enduring, a flame neither time nor circumstance could diminish. And today, when I love back...I see two souls living wholeheartedly, loving solely! Happy Engagement Anniversary to *US*," she concluded the post.

Saira Banu married Dilip Kumar in 1966. She was 22 and Kumar 44 years old at the time of marriage.They did not have any children. In his autobiography, Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow, he revealed that the actress had conceived in 1972, but developed complications in the pregnancy, leading to a miscarriage.

- IANS