I suspect Amrohi set himself a standard to beat. K. Asif had earlier made Mughal-e-Azam (Kamal had written most of the dialogue) and Amrohi was determined to cross Mr Asif’s effort as far as grandeur and visual craft were concerned. If Asif had memorable battle scenes, Amrohi would have memorable dancing scenes. If Asif had a memorable historical plot, Amrohi would have a memorable human plot. This rivalry existed in real life too, and its antecedents went back to the days when Mr Amrohi was thinking of Anarkali. I have a feeling that he always felt that his interpretation of this love story, had it been completed, would have been better than Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam. Legitimately, you might ask why I devote a separate chapter, the only separate chapter, to a Meena Kumari film. The reason is this: of all the seventy-seven movies my heroine made, she had a special niche for Pakeezah. My own view is that she was wrong; that Sahebjan was not her most gripping performance. However, intellectually and emotionally, of all the films she made, Pakeezah held her most.