Columnist and author Shobhaa De has claimed that veteran actor Hema Malini was “completely sidelined” by Dharmendra’s first family following his death. She revealed that it was the reason she was absent from Dharmendra’s prayer meet, which was organised by his first wife Prakash Kaur and sons Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol.
Shobhaa reveals
During an interview with Barkha Dutt, Shobhaa De spoke about the family dynamics of late actor Dharmendra’s family. Shobhaa De claimed that Hema Malini was left out by Prakash Kaur’s (Dharmendra’s first wife) family.
She said, “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 shared that Hema could have “hijacked those emotional moments”, but she opted to choose dignity over “one-upmanship”.
“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,” Shobhaa shared.
On November 27, a prayer meet was held for Dharmendra in Mumbai, which was organised by his sons, Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol. Hema and her daughters, Esha and Ahana, didn’t attend that prayer meeting. Instead, she held a separate ceremony at her own residence to honour Dharmendra on the same day.
Hema is Dharmendra’s second wife, with the veteran actor having been previously married to Prakash Kaur. Prakash and Dharmendra married in 1954, with whom he had four children- Sunny, Bobby, Vijeta, and Ajeeta. Hema and Dharmendra have two daughters- Esha and Ahana.
Dharmendra dies at 89
Dharmendra died at the age of 89 on November 24, days ahead of his 90th birthday on December 8. The actor was discharged from Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital earlier this month and was recuperating at home. He was cremated in Mumbai on November 25. He will be seen on screen for the final time in the war drama Ikkis, starring Agastya Nanda.
