Struggling Dharmendra broke into Dilip Kumar’s house, watched the actor sleep: ‘Began to fancy that Dilip and I were siblings’

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He recalled that after finding his way from one door to another, he found himself at his bedroom door. “I wasn’t stopped at the gate by anybody, and so I walked right into the house through the main door. There was a wooden staircase leading to a bedroom upstairs. Again, nobody stopped me, so I climbed up the stairs and stood at the entrance to one of the rooms,” he shared. Dharmendra recalled that he saw a “fair, slim, handsome” man sleeping on the couch and as the man the sensed someone’s eyes on him, he “woke up somewhat startled.” This man was Dilip Kumar.

“He sat up and stared at me, quite taken aback to see a total stranger standing gingerly at his bedroom door gazing admiringly at him. As for me, I couldn’t believe my eyes: It was Dilip Kumar, my idol, in front of me. He called out to a servant loudly. Now scared, I ran down the staircase and bolted out of the house looking behind to see if I was being followed,” he shared. Dharmendra shared that he ran for a while and after he reached a safe place, he looked back at his actions, and questioned himself. “I realised how reckless I had been by intruding into the privacy of a star. So what if there was no watchman at the gate and no family member in the house to stop me?” he wrote.

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Six years after this incident, when Dharmendra won a talent competition and actually got a chance to meet some celebrities from the industry, he ran into Dilip Kumar’s sister. “I saw her leaving and I ran after her requesting her to [arrange to] meet Dilip Sahab. I told her I firmly believed that he was my brother too,” he said.

When he finally landed at Dilip Kumar’s door, this time with an invitation, Dharmendra couldn’t believe his luck. “When I was leaving, he took me upstairs to his room and gave me a sweater from his cupboard because it was a bit chilly and he had noticed I was wearing just a thin cotton shirt. He hugged me and saw me off at the gate. I can still feel the warmth of that hug because it was genuine,” he wrote.

Dharmendra had high regard for Dilip Kumar. The two never got a chance to work with each other.