Shobhaa De Claims Hema Malini Was “Sidelined” By Dharmendra’s Family After His Death
Shobhaa De reflected on the emotional divide between Dharmendra’s two families after his death, praising Hema Malini’s dignity and restraint amid separate prayer meets.
The passing of legendary actor Dharmendra has not only left a void in Indian cinema but has also brought the complexities of his personal life into the public eye. Following his death on November 24 at the age of 89, the distinct divide between his two families became apparent through separate memorial services, drawing poignant observations from columnist Shobhaa De. Two distinct prayer meets were held in Mumbai on November 27.
A service led by Dharmendra’s first wife, Prakash Kaur, and their sons, Sunny and Bobby Deol, first took place on November 27. This was followed by a separate, private ceremony held by Hema Malini and her daughters, Esha and Ahana Deol, at their residence on the same day. Additionally, Hema Malini organised a third prayer meet in Delhi, which was attended by her colleagues from the political sphere, marking her role as a Member of Parliament from Mathura.
In a candid conversation with Barkha Dutt on Mojo Story, Shobhaa De revealed that Hema Malini was “completely sidelined” and effectively frozen out by the first family during the official mourning period.
Shobhaa De noted how difficult it must have been for Hema to be left out of the primary family’s service after spending nearly half a century “nourishing and cherishing” her life with Dharmendra.
“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 De said.
Shobhaa De praised Hema Malini for not “hijacking” the emotional narrative. She noted that Hema could have easily made a public display of her grief or engaged in “one-upmanship,” which the media would have covered intensely. Instead, she chose to maintain her privacy and conduct her own functions with “utmost dignity”.
“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,” she said.
Dharmendra’s personal history has always been a subject of public interest. He married Prakash Kaur in 1954 and had four children with her: Sunny, Bobby, Vijeta, and Ajeeta. Dharmendra later married Hema Malini in 1980 without divorcing his first wife. They had two daughters, Esha and Ahana.
Despite having two parallel families who lived across the road from each other, Dharmendra never disowned either. Shobhaa De emphasised that Hema remained his wife until the very end, and the ruling party would have supported her had she requested a massive state-level memorial.
“The ruling party would have probably bent over backwards had she just indicated that she would have wanted something on a huge scale to mark the passing of… He was her husband at the end of it all. He had two parallel families. A primary family and her, but at no point had either of them disengaged or disowned one another as husband and wife. So I think she chose well, she chose like Hema Malini,” Shobhaa De added.
Dharmendra passed away just days before his 90th birthday (December 8) after a brief period of recuperation at his Mumbai home following a discharge from Breach Candy Hospital.
Fans will get one last glimpse of the ‘He-Man’ of Bollywood on the big screen in the upcoming war drama ‘Ikkis’, co-starring Amitabh Bachchan’s grandson Agastya Nanda.
