After he became the actor whose photograph young women would slip under their pillows at night, Dharmendra — classically handsome, with a gaze that was achingly tender — may have seemed destined for adulation. Which is why it is easy to forget how remarkable his journey really was, how long and vivid his arc — from a village in Ludhiana district to the heights of stardom in Bombay. In a Bollywood that is today roiled by the outsiders vs “nepo kids” debate, it is the sort of story that is as evocative as it is becoming rare. To make the kind of mark that Dharmendra did, without the cushion of a “khandaan” or connections to ease him into a strange world, it took good looks, but also loads of talent and a nimbleness — though, till the end, Dharam paaji was known to dance with two left feet — to avoid the trap so many of his colleagues walked into: The image and mannerism they created and were then imprisoned by, or the confines of the formula that ruled the film industry.
When Dharmendra, who died Monday aged 90, told his own story, he cast Fate in a key role. The actor would recount that he found his calling when he was still a schoolboy, watching Dilip Kumar on the big screen. Overcoming familial objections to his ambition of becoming a “hero” after he won a talent contest organised by Filmfare, he left for Bombay, where the success of Shola Aur Shabnam in 1961 put him on the path to stardom. His ability as an actor to express a molten vulnerability served him well in romantic roles, such as in Anupama and Dream Girl, while his intense turn in films like Bandini and Satyakam, and comic flair in a Chupke Chupke or Sholay, underlined his range. Not even the rise of Amitabh Bachchan — whose Angry Young Man rewrote the Bollywood script in the 1970s — could dim this star’s shine.
