DHARAM, HIS IDOL AND THAT COAT

Ali Peter John

If there is one thing that I loved doing and have been very fortunate in doing it is following the journeys of dreamer who come to my city,the city which is best known as the city of dreamers and their dreams. In my fifty years in following this mad hobby which luckily has also been giving me my bread and sometimes my bread and butter ,I have chased any number of dreamers who have come to this city with hope and their dreams in their eyes. And I think there has never been a better dreamer who has come and conquered not only the city and the country, but also the world, it is the man known as Dharam and whose real name is Dharmendra Singh Deol......

This handsome young man had started life as a driller working in the quarries of Saanewal in the Phagwara district of Punjab. He was not sure about what the future had in store for him, but life took one big turn for him when he saw two films with Dilip Kumar as the hero. He was obsessed by the man known as Dilip Kumar in the films he saw. He used to cycle his way from his village to the city only to see posters with Dilip Kumar on them and he used to wonder if he could ever be someone like the Dilip Kumar he saw in the films and on the posters and kept asking himself if he could be like Dilip Kumar some day .He had a large mirror on the dressing table of his house in which he saw himself and tried to make his hair look like his idol and then ask the mirror, "kya main Dilip Kumar ban sakta hoon ?"

He had grown so obsessed with his idol that he made up his mind to go to Bombay .He used to sit on a railway foot bridge at eleven in the night and see the Frontier Mail speeding towards Bombay and would pray to the train and say, "hey Frontier Mail maata, mujhe Bambai le chal".In the Meanwhile, he had told his father who was a School teacher about his dream and his father asked him to write an application for the "job "of an actor which he wanted to be. The result was that Dharmendra filled an application form for the Film Filmfare talent contest. He was called to Bombay and the same Frontier Mail he used to pray to carried him and his dream to Bombay, the city he had only seen in his dreams.....

A tough struggle started for Dharmendra, even though he was selected at the Filmfare talent contest. He started living with some friends at the railway quarters in Santa Cruz, where he had to sometimes go without food and had once even eaten a laxative powder called Isabgol mixed with water....

But,even in the midst of insecurity and uncertainty, he had not lost track of his first goal and that was to see Dilip Kumar in real life .He kept walking around studios looking for work and more than work looking for Dilip Kumar.

He had made friends with Mr.L.P.Rao who was a film journalist and a critic working for Filmfare and whose only weakness was the bottle. It was during one of their drinking sessions in a country liquor adda that he told Mr.Rao about his ambition to meet Dilip Kumar.Mr.Rao first laughed and then told him that it could be arranged and that he would talk to his colleague, Farida,who was the younger sister of Dilip Kumar.

The next morning Mr.Rao told Dharmendra that Farida had arranged for a meeting for him(Dharmendra)at Dilip Kumar's house and Dharmendra couldn't believe what Mr.Rao told him, but the meeting with Dilip Kumar was fixed for the same evening and Dharmendra kept walking in the air for the rest of the day ...

He walked all the way to Pali Hill to reach the Bungalow of his idol ,only to find his idol and dream waiting outside the main gate of his bungalow to welcome him and Dharmendra had tears in his eyes. He couldn't control his joy.....

That whole evening was like a page from a fairy tale for the young man from Saanewal who had only seen distant dreams of seeing and what he was now seeing in reality was something he just couldn't believe. The thespian had reserved the whole evening for his new guest. He served him the best Scotch which Dharmendra had not tasted before. He told the young man stories about the good old days, recited Urdu poetry and finally served the kind of dinner the rich and the famous could only dream of. For Dharmendra, the best part of the evening was the advice Dilip Kumar gave him to follow if he had to last long as an actor....

It was December and was very cold outside the bungalow when Dharmendra started walking out and was heading towards nowhere with the thespian seeing him off. It was only a few seconds later that Dilip Kumar came out with a warm coat and called Dharmendra back and gave the coat to him and asked him to wear it as it would protect him from the biting cold. Dharmendra couldn't sleep that night and that coat was his prized possession in his wardrobe for the next fifty years and I have a feeling that Dharmendra still has that coat with him.

"DHARMENDRA CRYING ?"

How do I know the story about that evening and the magic coat ? Of course, it was told to me by Dharmendra himself with all the details and the emotions. I was excited as a journalist and went back to office and wrote the story about Dharam and the coat and had filed it and forgotten all about it because I had other assignments to cover and write about.

It was Friday when "Screen "hit the stands with my story on Dharam and the coat published in it .I was still not conscious about what I had in store for me when I reached office. Dharam ji had been my good friend who he called,
"Mera daru bhai "
(we shared the same love for alcohol of any kind from Scotch to tharra)

I reached office only to find panic written on every face and my boss who was scared of and any kind of controversy asked, "dimaag kharab, tune Dharam ji ke sath kya badmaashi kiya ?Subh se dus phone aya uska aur zor zor se gaali de raha tha tumhaare naam se phone karne ko bola hai,phone kar. I called and for more than three minutes Dharam ji was only abusing me in both Hindi and Punjabi. He didn't give me a chance to ask him why he was going mad and he finally said, "Ali ke bachhe tune abhi tak Dharam ka pyaar dekha hai, ab Dharam ka nafrat dekh ".

It was only towards the end of his tirade against me that he said, "Dharam crying ,Dharam crying, Dharam ko kisine rote huwaye dekha hai "? And he banged the phone. I knew he had started drinking since morning and had read my piece in which I had written about the coat and how he had cried with joy. He had misunderstood the word crying and the phrase about someone crying with joy. He in his drunken state believed that I had written that he had cried like people normally cry and his Punjabi friends had added to his anger by telling him that I had made fun of him.

I didn't talk to him or go anywhere near him for the next six months as I knew how he had cracked the scull of a senior journalist for writing gossip about him and Hema Malini. Six months later,it was the muhurat of a film at the Seth Studio and he was the hero of the film.That morning I had decided that I would stand in front of his car come what may.He arrived and saw me standing in the middle of the road. He got out of his car and said "arre,mere daru bhai main kab se tereko dhoond raha hoon?Yaar maaf kar de, uss deen sharaab peekar tere sath bahut badtamazee ki Sorry, yaar. He had given up drinking and so had I . He asked his man Bhanwaar Singh to bring two nariyal paanis and we celebrated our new friendship which lasts till this day.

DHARAM ALWAYS WANTED TO WORK WITH DILIP KUMAR....

Dharam had become a major star as Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand had predicted.But he always nurtured a dream to be teamed with his idol. The first time he succeeded was in a black and white film called "Anokha Milan",but very few know about it.The next time, he saw his dream coming true was when B.R.Chopra launched a film called "Chankya Chandragupt",with Dilip Kumar as Chankya and Dharmendra as Chandragupt. The most ambitious and expensive film of the time couldn't be made because the producer, Kishore Doshi suddenly died of a massive heart attack.

The next time he was supposed to work with the thespian was in Nasir Husain's" Zabardast" in which Dilip Kumar was teamed up with Asha Parekh for the first time and Dharmendra was to play a stellar role.Dilip Sahab however had a clash of ideas with Nasir Husain and left the film but only after recommending the name of Sanjeev Kumar to play the character he was to play.Dilip Kumar was keen to have Dharam in the cast of his first film as a director, "Kalinga ",but things didn't materialize. He then wanted Dharam's son Sunny Deol to be cast in the film and Dharam was very happy, but things didn't work out again and a new Punjabi actor called Amitoje Mann was cast and Dharam regretted his not being a part of his idols first film as a director.

Dharam however continues to have the best of relations with Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu and continues to maintain that he is whatever he is today all because of one man, Dilip Kumar....

My friend Mr.Trinetra Bajpai had written a massive coffee table book on Dilip Kumar (with his daughter Anshula )titled "Peerless Icon Inspiring Generations" and he wanted Dharmendra to release the book .I had to only mention the name of Dilip Kumar and he made all the changes in his diary (which is still full of commitments) to see that he could be present at the launch of the book .He was there before times and was moved and thrilled to see Farida sitting in the first row with him, this was the same Farida who had introduced him to his idol and he had not forgotten any of the moments he had spent with"the great Dilip Kumar "on that evening more than sixty years ago .
Some relationships are just made, born or destined to happen and nothing or no one can come in their ways.