A lot in life comes with a question or an exclamation of what might have been.
What might have been if Dharmendra had not rejected the role of Vijay Khanna in Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer?
What might have been if Hrishikesh Mukherjee had kept his word and made Anand, with Dharmendra?
Dharmendra in Anupama (Picture from social media)
What might have been if Dharmendra had bagged the best actor for Anupama or Satyakaam or Phool aur Patthar?
What might have been if the judges of Filmfare Talent Contest had rejected the photograph of a lanky youth from a village in Punjab’s Ludhiana?
In the last instance, the answer is there would have been no Dharmendra in the Hindi film industry.
Dharmendra or Dharam ji, as he was called by those close to him and far, lived life like the large Patiala pegs he preferred.
Barely 22, Dharam ji left Ludhiana and his beloved Punjab on the Frontier Mail and reached Bombay.
A self-professed fan of the reigning superstars from those days Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand, Dharam ji overcame all the odds to win the talent contest and then carved a space without moulding himself on any of the reigning deities of filmdom in his times.
In his first film, Dil Bhi Tera, Hum Bhi Tere, the lanky Jat whose name on the credit rolls appeared as "introducing Dharmender" played a boxer.
The next, Shola aur Shabnam, was a hit. He and newcomer Tarla Mehta were introduced as a new romantic team. His name billed as Dharminder.
The Hindi film industry was still unsure of where to fit this Punjabi. There was no dearth of Punjabis in the Hindi film industry. Of three reigning box-office kings, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar were from Peshawar and Dev Anand was from Gurdaspur.
There were others too who came from the land of the five rivers.
Dharmendra retained the dehaati in him all through his life.
In the late '60s and early '70s, there were only two actors who stood tall amidst the tornado that was unleased by the arrival of Rajesh Khanna on the scene. One was Dev Anand and the other Dharmendra.
Playing himself in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi, he tells a stranger, a professor whose niece is in love with the man Dharmendra. “Main to aajkal Rajesh Khanna ka naam sunn raha hoon (I hear the name of Rajesh Khanna these days).”
Dharmendra endured Rajesh Khanna and stayed relevant, acting in some of the biggest hits in the '70s, pursuing the reigning leading lady Hema Malini, whom he married later (he was already married when he came to Bombay in 1958).
While Rajesh Khanna fell with the arrival of the angry young man Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra again stood firm and even went on to form a professional and personal partnership with Bachchan.
Jaya Bhaduri in her early days as a student of films and later co-actor in Guddi and Samadhi thought of him as a Greek God. Hema Malini, who went on to be his wife, sang Kaamdev (the god of love in Hindu mythology) jaisi teri suratiya.
Doubters may have had questions about Dharam ji’s acting chops, he himself was always confident. When his contemporaries shied from sharing screen with the scene-stealer Mehmood, Dharam ji appeared in multiple films, their biggest hit Ramanand Sagar’s spy drama Aankhen.
Shashi Kapoor had in a radio programme in Akashvani recalled his personal days of struggle, doing the rounds of studios. One afternoon, Shashi Kapoor, Manoj Kumar and Dharmendra were waiting outside Mohan Studios. In Shashi Kapoor’s own words, not him, nor Dharmendra but Manoj Kumar was the best looking among the three.
A vast majority of the Hindi film lovers would not agree with the late Shashi Kapoor.
Among the nearly 328 films that Dharmendra acted in his six decades long career only a handful still remain in memories and they do so as much to the credit of the respective directors, as also his performances.
Critical appreciation eluded Dharmendra, possibly the only Hindi film actor to have twice delivered seven back-to-back hits in a calendar year (1973 and 1987), all his life.
“I used to stitch a suit every year before the awards. I did Satyakaam, I did Anupama, Phool aur Patthar, but I did not get any awards. Then I stopped caring about awards.”
Dharmendra in Dharam-Veer (Picture from social media)
There was no other actor in India who could have carried an entire film wearing a mini-skirt (in Manmohan Desai’s Dharam-Veer).
The street smart Raka of Seeta aur Geeta, the gruff Shaaka alias Shakti Singh in Phool aur Patthar, the witty professor of botany in Chupke Chupke, the do-gooder Robin Hood-like character in Jugnu, the faux police inspector out to avenge his father’s death in Pratigya and the gloriously underrated Sitamgar.
Dharmendra was essentially a director’s actor. He proved it with Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Raj Khosla, J.P. Dutta, Anurag Basu and Sriram Raghavan.
The Dharmendra in Satyakaam was a different actor than the nostril-flaring one seen in Aag hi Aag, Loha, Batwara, Huqumat and others in the '80s and '90s.
Before Satyakaam, there was the quiet, beautiful (a word not usually associated with male actors) prison doctor in Bimal Roy’s Bandini who quietly watched the prisoner he is smitten with choosing an elderly man over him. There was the poet of Anupama, reserved and quietly rebellious. The ghost-writer in Pramod Chakravarty’s Naya Zamana (a remake of Bimal Roy’s Udayer Pathe). And, the idealist engineer in Satyakaam for whom “compromise means corruption”.
A peek into any of these films might encourage a film enthusiast to discover a new Dharmendra.
Clad in a plain white shirt and jeans, he jumped onto the railway tracks, careful, slow, a little hesitant. On the other side of the tracks on the platform is standing his love, Nafisa Ali. That one moment captured in all tenderness. He does not shout from the top of a tank se kud jaoonga, mar jaaoonga. A man who is confident enough to love, express love at an age when it is no longer considered normal. That was Dharmendra in Life in a Metro, at the age of 71.
Dharam ji walked away gently.
“Yeh jala hua studio dekh rahe ho. Yahin maine apna career shuru kiya tha. Bimal da ke saath. Bimal Roy. Bandini bann rahi thi. Bimal da nahin rahe. Yeh studio bhi khatm ho gaya. Do Bigha Zameen, Bandini, Madhumati, Krishan Chopra ki Char Deewari, Heera Moti kitni badi badi tasveerein bani thi yahaan. Aaj kisse yaad hain woh naam. Dhundhle hote hot ek din yeh naam bhi mit jaayenge. Aur yeh jagah jo kala ta teerth-sthaan honi chahiye thi, shayad ek din yahaan sabun ki factory bann jayegi. (This burnt down studio, I started my career here. With Bimal da. Bimal Roy. Bandini was made here. Bimal da is no more. This studio is also dead. Do Bigha Zameen, Bandini, Madhumati, Krishan Chopra’s Char Deewari, Heera Moti so many big films were made here. Who remembers those names? The names will fade and then disappear one day. This place which should have been a pilgrim-spot might become a soap factory someday,” says Dharmendra playing himself in Guddi.
He was the last actor to have worked with Bimal Roy and the generation of filmmakers that followed.
I will go back to re-watch his old films.
There was once a star who might have been a remarkable actor.