Dust, stardust and Dharmendra

WHEN I told my father that Dharmendra was no more, the air in the room turned heavy, as if the walls themselves stopped breathing. He didn’t speak; he slipped away from me, into the dusty lanes of 1960s’ Sangrur, where a boy once stood outside Roxy Cinema, staring at a poster of the handsomest man alive. In that silence, I felt my father’s childhood die a little. And mine with it. Two generations, bound by the same aching love for Punjab’s Greek god, sat wordless, mourning the same man.

I was fortunate to meet him once. In 2014, during my first week as a civil servant in SAS Nagar, I attended an award function solely because someone said, “Dharmendra is coming.” I sat far from the stage, eyes fixed on his table. When the DC called me so that I could meet him, a big guard blocked my way. “Dharam ji is not well.” I stood two steps away, heart pounding. Then the DC whispered something to Dharmendra. He turned, smiled and said, “Par eh taan bahut chhoti hai!” He slowly stood up and opened his arms. The guard stepped aside. The world went silent.

He hugged me, those big arms around tiny me, and placed his famous hand gently on my head. “God bless you, my darling. Khush raho,” he whispered. At 80, time had dimmed the Greek-god looks, but not the glow. His skin was impossibly soft, softer than anything I’d ever touched, like touching a blessing. That softness, I realised later, came from a man who never forgot his roots.

In every interview, on every stage, no matter the question, he always returned to the same heartbeat: Punjab, his parents, his pind. Other legends are remembered for films; Dharmendra is remembered for the village he carried in his voice. We may not instantly know where Amitabh Bachchan or Rajesh Khanna were born, but everyone knows Dharmendra was from Dangon village near Sahnewal — and he never let us forget it.

A Spanish friend once asked me in the US, “Why do you bring your Punjabi identity into every second conversation — are you constantly reminding yourself?” I smiled. We don’t remind ourselves. We never forget. Being Punjabi is the pulse under our skin. It’s the breath we take, weighing the generations and eras gone by.

For the world, he was cinema’s He-Man. For us, he was the memory our fathers passed down to us, the pride that made us walk taller. Punjabis joke that there have only ever been two elements in our history: the dust of our fields and the stardust that rises from it. Dharmendra rose from Punjab’s dust, wearing stardust on his shoulders, and when he left, he returned to the ever-luminous sky he came from.

Somewhere in another time zone, at a different dawn we cannot yet envision, who knows — he may rise again, walk once more and mingle with the dust of his beloved Punjab.

And until then, he will always find a place in our tales, in our memories, and in our collective nostalgia! He will live forever in the pages of Dastaan-e-Punjab!