Garam Dharam leaves behind 'Yaadon Ki Baaraat'

Dharmendra, whose irresistible combo of a soft face and tough body made him the poster boy of endearing masculinity, earning him the sobriquet 'Garam Dharam', and whose Venus-Adonis-like pairing with Hema Malini sold millions of film tickets and gossip magazines, passed away in Mumbai on Monday. Ailing for some time, he was two weeks short of 90.

In the 1970s, a Hindi magazine ran a readers' contest posing the query, 'Why I like Dharmendra'. The winning answer: "If the question was, why I don't like him, nobody would have won the prize."


Everybody loved Dharmendra. The actor, who starred in more than 300 films over six-and-a-half decades, thrived even when a tsunami called Rajesh Khanna struck India in late 1960s and when Amitabh Bachchan's Angry Young Man became the unofficial spokesperson of the nation's angry young in early 1970s. Unfazed by fluctuating trends and fickle public taste, he remained a constant star on the Bollywood firmament.

Blockbusters like 'Phool Aur Patthar', 'Aankhen', 'Mera Gaon Mera Desh', 'Jugnu', 'Yaadon Ki Baaraat', 'Sholay', 'Dharam Veer,' 'Hukumat,' made action films his province and created Hindi film's enduring He-Man. But Dharmendra was more. He effortlessly romcom-ed as a botany professor masquerading as a car driver in the inter-generational favourite 'Chupke Chupke' and delivered his career-best act as the idealist engineer in 'Satyakam', both with director Hrishikesh Mukherjee who eternalised the 'other' Dharmendra.

Unpretentious and generous to a fault, he embodied the soul of rural Punjab. In one of his last films, 'Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani (2023)', he reprised a classic 'Hum Dono' track, "Abhi na jao chhod kar, ke dil abhi bhara nahi. (Please don't go. I haven't had enough of you)." His fans would be saying the same.

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