On November 24 this year, the Hindi film industry and our country lost one of the most adored gems of Bollywood when Dharmendra passed away. The veteran superstar breathed his last at his Mumbai residence at the age of 89, weeks before his 90th birthday. On November 27, Dharam Paaji’s sons Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol hosted a prayer meet for the late superstar at Taj Lands End in Mumbai. Dharmendra’s wife Hema Malini, who did not attend the prayer meet, organised a Gita Paath at her home on the same day. On December 11, Hema along with her daughters Esha Deol and Ahana Deol hosted a separate prayer meet in Delhi. Indian novelist and columnist Shobhaa De has now claimed that Dharmendra’s first family with wife Prakash Kaur sidelined Hema after his death.
In an interview with Barkha Dutt, Shobhaa De stated, “Must have been a particularly difficult and hard decision… To be totally left out by the first family from something that she had spent 45 years of her own life… Nourishing, cherishing, which had enriched her life. She had two daughters from this marriage. It must have hurt terribly, but she kept all that for her own privacy. However she wished to deal with it and when she did have a public function, I thought she conducted it with utmost dignity, not just for herself but for the person she had lost…”
Shobhaa went on to explain, “Given the fact that Hema is a towering personality herself, the idea that she chose dignity over making a public display of one-upmanship, I think, says a lot about her character. She could so easily have, in a way, it’s not a nice word but, hijacked those emotional moments right after Dharam ji passed away. The media would have loved to cover every tear and every gasp that she may have taken and intruded into her privacy and completely stripped her of the dignity that obviously matters so much to her.”
{{/usCountry}}Shobhaa went on to explain, “Given the fact that Hema is a towering personality herself, the idea that she chose dignity over making a public display of one-upmanship, I think, says a lot about her character. She could so easily have, in a way, it’s not a nice word but, hijacked those emotional moments right after Dharam ji passed away. The media would have loved to cover every tear and every gasp that she may have taken and intruded into her privacy and completely stripped her of the dignity that obviously matters so much to her.”
{{/usCountry}}Hema Malini is a Member of Parliament from Mathura. Shobhaa remarked how the ruling party would probably have ‘bent over backwards’ if Hema had indicated that she wanted something on a huge scale to mark the passing of her husband. Shobhaa further noted that Dharam ji had two parallel families — a primary family and Hema — but that at no point had either of them disengaged from or disowned one another as husband and wife. She concluded by saying that Hema had chosen well.
When Hema Malini and Dharmendra tied the knot in 1980, the latter had been married to Prakash Kaur for 26 years.