Dharmendra: The Charismatic He-Man Whose Stardom, Scandals And Soulfulness Defined An Era |
Ehsaan-e-mand hoon zabaan-e-Urdu tera/ teri zabaan mein bayan-e-ehsaas-e-dil aa gaya
I am grateful to you O Urdu for I have learnt to express my emotions through you
—Dharmendra
“When I first saw Dharmendra many years ago, I wondered to myself, ‘God, what if you’d made me like him: so handsome with heavenly eyes’.” The praise came from none other than the legend, Dilip Kumar, while presenting the lifetime achievement award to Dharmendra at the 42nd Filmfare Awards way back in 1997. What he said next was perhaps the highest point of Dharmendra’s personal and professional lives. “A simple man is great at portraying tragedies, and I thought he will now surge ahead of me,” confessed the thespian to a visibly emotional Dharam.
Dharmendra’s almost seven-decade-long career saw many highs and lows, and he battled numerous controversies, but he never lost the love and support of his numerous fans, not even after the widely criticised remark he made during his 2004 election campaign in Bikaner, saying that people should elect him so that he could become a “dictator” and enforce moral discipline in society. Ultimately, the budding politician in him lost out to the seasoned actor, and Dharmendra made a graceful, and grateful, exit from politics.
The ruggedly handsome actor was in love with love itself, and that showed in his personality—in the way he smiled, in the way he talked, and in the way he looked—and his poetry. It is no surprise then that he became a heartthrob of countless women, both on and off screen, be that his childhood crush Hamida, tragedy queen........