To have known him is to have experienced a rare and steady light: Sharmila Tagore on 'birthday twin' Dharmendra

New Delhi, Dec 8 (PTI) Veteran star Sharmila Tagore says whenever she thinks about Dharmendra, her "birthday twin" and co-star in Hindi cinema classics such as "Satyakam", "Anupama" and "Chupke Chupke", what comes her mind is "an unaltered, steady radiance" of someone who carried his fame lightly.

Dharmendra, who passed away on November 24, would have turned 90 on Monday, while Tagore turned 81 today.

She remembered her friend and co-star of many movies in an affectionately drawn portrait.

"Looking back across the decades, the light that falls on Dharmendra remains unchanged. It is a curious thing to say about someone whose career has spanned such a vast and changing landscape of Hindi cinema, but that is what I have always felt: An unaltered, steady radiance.

"Perhaps it is because even when he was being celebrated as the 'He-Man' of Indian cinema, or adored as one of our most beautiful stars, Dharmendra himself seemed pleasantly unaffected by all of it. He carried fame lightly as though it belonged to someone else," she wrote in The Indian Express.

The actor said Dharmendra's legacy is not just limited to the vast body of work he leaves behind, but the gentleness with which he inhabited that journey.

"To have known him, to have worked with him, is to have experienced a rare and steady light, one that illuminated not just the screen, but all of us who stood beside him," Tagore said.

Recalling her earliest memories of working with Dharmendra on "Devar" and "Anupama", the actor said she was struck by the gentleness behind his presence. Dharmendra, she said, went out of his way to put her at ease while she was still finding her place in the industry.

Tagore said Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who is often credited for giving Dharmendra some of his career's best movies, required his actors to build a world "out of restraint, feelings that breathed beneath the surface, eyes that spoke more than words".

And Dharmendra understood that language instinctively.

"He had an intuitive grasp of stillness: How a character could convey warmth, longing, or empathy without being overdramatic. Watching him live the part was a lesson in quiet control. I remember thinking how unusual it was for a leading man, at that time, to be so comfortable with softness. There was no need for him to assert masculinity; he simply was, and that confidence allowed him to let the moment speak for itself," she recalled.

Remembering the actor's performance of an idealistic man in "Satyakam", Tagore said Mukherjee's films required "honesty, not performance" and Dharmendra rose to that challenge.

"Satyakam", she said, remains one of the "most luminous achievements" of his career.

"Even now, when I think of Satyakam, what stays with me is the transparency of his emotions, untainted, unguarded, profoundly moving," she said.

"Mere Humdam Mere Dost" and "Chupke Chupke" were the lighter movies that they did together and Dharmendra, she said, was equally great in these comedic performances.

"The same actor who carried the weight of 'Satyakam' could, within a few years, inhabit the delicious absurdities of 'Chupke Chupke' with a lightness that seemed to defy gravity altogether. The lisp, the mock-serious botanical discourse — every gesture was precise yet appeared entirely spontaneous. Comedy, in his hands, became a form of revelation rather than escape," she said, adding that Dharmendra's portrayal of Parimal Tripathi deserved a National Award.

Tagore last worked with Dharmendra in "Sunny", starring his son Sunny Deol. Dharmendra had a cameo in the movie. Dharmendra, she said, was one of those rare human beings who never allowed fame to distort his values.

"Stardom can do complicated things to people. It can create distance, it can magnify insecurities, it can harden one’s relationship with the world. But he remained remarkably untouched by all that.

"He extended the same warmth to the spot-boys who rushed with chairs between takes, to the light-men perched on precarious ladders, and to the junior artists waiting on sets endlessly. He offered them the same easy smile, there was no pretence. The generosity came from the Punjab soil that inhabited him — open, warm, indifferent to rank. Dharam is now returned to that same soil," she said.

Tagore said they last spoke over the phone after she had a surgery. While in hospital, she saw "Chupke Chupke" and she called her co-star to say how she relished his brilliant performance in the movie. Tagore reportedly underwent a surgery for early stage lung cancer in 2023.

"Stardom can make people larger than life, Dharmendra, paradoxically, became larger by remaining human. When I think of him now, what rises first is not a particular film, not even a particular scene, but a feeling of warmth, of reassurance, of camaraderie that was spontaneous.

"... It has been one of the privileges of my life to have shared some of my finest cinematic journeys with him. Those years shaped me as an actor and enriched me as a person. Dharmendra brought grace to every interaction, depth to every performance, and a quiet dignity to a profession that often overwhelms its own practitioners," she said.

Tagore, who was initially offered Shabana Azmi's role in Karan Johar's "Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani" but had to turn down the role as she just had her surgery, said she still regrets not doing the film.

"Covid, doctors, fear— had stopped me. It would have been wonderful to share screen space with him after all those years. Alas, it was not meant to be," she said.

Tagore believes Dharmendra is "still laughing his open, defenseless, immortal laughter" somewhere over the fields of Punjab.

"The lights dim in hundreds of small-town cinema halls. Somewhere a harmonica plays 'Yeh dosti,' and young men who never knew a world without him feel, for the first time, the small ache of irreversible loss. And we, who spend our lives trying to trap truth inside the delicate net of art, will remember a man who simply lived it, authentically, carelessly, magnificently.

"Thank you Dharam, my birthday twin, for the light you carried so lightly. I am sure with your entry into heaven; the Gods must be smiling 'chupke chupke'," she wrote. PTI BK MG BK BK