Saeed Jaffrey

Saeed Jaffrey was born on 8 January, 1929 to a Punjabi Muslim family in Malerkotla in the Punjab Province of British India (now in Punjab , India). At that time, his maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Fazle Imam of Banur, was the Dewan or Prime Minister of the princely state of Malerkotla . : 1 His father, Dr Hamid Hussain Jaffrey, was a physician and a civil servant with the Health Services department of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in colonial India.

Hamid's wife and the mother of Saeed Jaffrey was Hamida Begum. Jaffrey had two brothers, Waheed and Hameed, and a sister, Shagufta. Jaffrey and his family moved from one medical posting to another within the United Provinces, living in cities like Muzaffarnagar , Lucknow , Mirzapur , Kanpur , Aligarh , Mussoorie , Gorakhpur and Jhansi . His father was a doctor in government service who was posted in many rural areas across the United Provinces and the family invariably moved with him.

At the time of his birth, Jaffrey's maternal grandfather was the diwan (first minister) of Malerkotla State . In 1938, Jaffrey joined Minto Circle School at Aligarh Muslim University where he developed his talent for mimicry. In 1939 he played the role of Dara Shikoh in a school play about Aurangzeb . At Aligarh, Jaffrey also mastered the Urdu language and attended riding school .