Tuhada-sadda kuchh saanjha hai

TEN years ago, while staying at the Sayaji Hotel at Kolhapur, my wife and I noticed a large crowd at the entrance. We learnt that they were fans of Dharmendra waiting to catch a glimpse of their favourite actor. He was staying in the same hotel. A felicitation ceremony had been organised in the town to honour him on his 80th birthday. Soon, we saw him being escorted towards a car waiting to take him to the function. Making eye contact with him, I said to him in Punjabi, “Tuhada-sadda kuchh saanjha hai” (We have something common between us).

He stood for a moment, curious to know what I meant. I told him that my mother had been a Punjab government gram sevika in Ludhiana district and her first posting was at his ancestral village Dangon in 1963. On hearing this, he stood motionless with folded hands for a few seconds. I then told him that she had also served for a few years at Sahnewal. That made Dharmendra visibly emotional. He reminisced that Sahnewal was where he spent his childhood and did his schooling.

Dharmendra's father and grandfather were born in Dangon, therefore, he has a lot of emotional attachment to the village. In 2015, he gifted his parental agricultural land by signing a gift deed in favour of his cousins, Shingara Singh and Manjit Singh. To celebrate Dharmendra’s 90th birthday falling next month, sarson was being cultivated by the two cousins, to be sent as ‘sarson da saag’ for the occasion to Mumbai, so that Dharmendra could enjoy his favourite dish with ‘makki di roti’.

I was also among the audience during the 42nd Filmfare Awards function held in February, 1997 in Mumbai. Thespian Dilip Kumar was called on stage to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Dharmendra, who became emotional and remarked that he never won a Filmfare Award for the Best Actor, even though scores of his films had celebrated jubilees. Responding to his jibe, Dilip Kumar commented, “Whenever I get to meet with God Almighty, I will ask him, why he did not make me as handsome as Dharmendra!” And the audience broke into a rapturous applause.

With no formal training in acting, young Dharmendra made it big as he was inherently a volcano of raw emotions. In Satyakam (1969) Dharmendra plays a young honest engineer, who never makes compromises, losing job after job, finally dying due to a fatal sickness. I could never make myself to see the complete film as it also depicted the story of my father, who refused to be corrupted, became jobless and died at age 43.