In the last few days, there have been birthday celebrations galore in honour of the aging superstar , Dharamendra, now in his eighties, and who, in a career spanning more than six decades, has tackled all genres with remarkable ease and grace. Undoubtedly, he is the stuff legends are made of. Growing up in a small village in Punjab, this handsome Jat-Sikh lad had stars in his eyes, and dreams to conquer tinsel town located in faraway Bombay, which was then ruled by the triumvirate of Raj-Dev-Dilip. Giving him formidable competition were new kids on the block, including Jeetendra, Sunil Dutt and Rajendra Kumar.

As per folklore, the 19 years old boy, already married to Prakash Kaur, boarded the Frontier Mail and landed in the film capital of the newly independent India. Not surprisingly, despite his immense talent, and looks that were worth dying for, he went through the usual grind of newcomers, before being able to secure a foothold in the film industry, which, even in those days, was quite competitive, although not to today’s extent (if one were to exclude so called star kids, who have it easy- but that is another story, for another day). Thereafter, he had a meteoric rise, catapulting him to the top league, where he rubbed shoulders with the best in the fraternity.

Over the years I revelled in the superlative performances which the deadly Deol delivered on a regular basis, setting the box office on fire, in collaboration with some of the most iconic directors of the day. That was till the late 70s, when I was around ten years old and not privy to the world of elders. But in 1980, when news appeared that Dharam Paaji had married his co-star of several successful movies, I wondered as to what the motivation for this act could have been?

In my liberal mind-set, interfering in someone’s personal life is just not done; it is only his or her professional commitments or performances that fall under the purview of my scrutiny. But this episode made me think, not as a bleeding heart feminist, but what I had imbibed as I grew up in a middle class, Punjabi family based in Dilli.

There were certain things that were deeply ingrained in me- dignity and respect for women being at the top of the pecking order; and somewhere towards the end was the idea of divorce. But what bordered on blasphemy was a man or woman’s second marriage while the first spouse was still alive. Even at that tender age I was flabbergasted by what I reckoned was a grave misdemeanour on paaji’s part that too 25 years after having tied the nuptial knots to Prakash Kaur- when he was just 19 years of age- and had sired a brood of beautiful children. Frankly, it made no sense to me at that age, nor does it make now.

I may be totally off track, as I am neither a student of Hindi cinema nor human psychology, but what I do have is some common sense, because hereon, I discerned an unmistakable decline in his career, especially as a leading hero , as new talent jumped onto the bandwagon, including his handsome elder son , Sunny.

Not only this, somewhere down the line, he failed to make the decisive shift in the choice of films he decided to work in, something his predecessors, including Ashok Kumar and Dilip Kumar had done wisely, thereby increasing their shelf life, On the other hand, Dharmendra accepted content that did justice neither to his talent nor his stature. Predictably, with a few exceptions, most of these films bombed at the box-office.

This hurts, and hurts badly, specially to the legions of fans who have placed him on a pedestal for so many years, and still worship him as a demi-god. They feel let down, especially on comparing him to the likes of Amitabh Bachan. Because even though the two are separated only by a few years, big B’s zest for life is incomparable, as is his childlike keenness to explore new things and most important, the type of roles that are still being written for him and which he continues to perform with passion.

Well, even today, none of us is privy to that phase of Paaji’s life, and one can only conjecture without any decisive conclusion as to what prompted a man straddling success to marry a second time, even as his first wife of 25 years was alive and was the proud mother of his four children. In doing so, Dharmendra, in most probability, opened the floodgates to several similar cases-hitherto rare, if not unheard of-most of which have led to fractured homes and broken hearts.

PS: We are discussing everything from the Indian middle class perspective. Social systems prevailing in other cultures and countries might be different.