Dharmendra was having difficulty getting up, still learnt dance steps at 3 am, recalls choreographer: ‘Why can I not do this?’

Vijay said that the team did not want the veteran actor to exert himself so they asked him to move a bit and just enjoy the music but he was insistent. “He insisted on doing the steps. He was sitting because for him, getting up again and again was also a little difficult,” he recalled. But, Dharmendra got up, called two of the boys, and learnt the steps.

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“He got up and he did it. Eventually, we told him not to do it because if we have many retakes, it would be physically exhausting for him. And honestly, dancing at that point was not very important for his character but for him personally, his thought was that he has to give his 100 percent. He was also feeling like no one should think that he can’t do it so he showed that he could. We were like, ‘Wow, this is fantastic’,” he recalled.

Vijay further shared that Dharmendra then asked for the lyrics of the song and offered to memorise it if any lip-sync was required. “We told him, ‘No sir, you don’t need to’. But he was very eager to give his 100 percent,” he recalled.

Vijay is the son of filmmaker Anil Ganguly, who worked with Dharmendra in a 1991 film called Dushman Devta. He reminded the star of the same and was very touched by his response. “I told him that you once worked with my father. He said, ‘He was a very kind man’. That felt good,” he recalled.

Dharmendra passed away at 89 in November.