Tribute: Dharmendra

I encountered Dharmendra first not as the larger-than-life star of Hindi cinema’s most iconic blockbuster, but as a familiar presence on Doordarshan, the medium through which many of us of the 1990s formed our earliest relationships with cinema. Unlike my peers, whose first memories of him were often tied to spectacle and action, my introduction arrived through an unexpected route: the tender, restrained world of Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

It was in Chupke Chupke, Guddi, and Satyakam that I first understood the depth of Dharmendra’s craft. These films revealed a performer capable of gentle humour, emotional clarity, and moral anguish that was far removed from the macho avatar that usually defines his star persona. Vijay Anand’s Blackmail reinforced this impression, and the actor’s quiet intensity and unforced charm made the most ordinary gestures resonate. These were my earliest understandings of Dharmendra, not the action hero, but the versatile, quietly expressive actor whose sensitivity could also hold a frame without raising his voice.

Yet there was another Dharmendra, one that emerged through the widescreen bravado of J.P. Dutta’s Ghulami, Batwara, and Kshatriya. In these films, his presence was commanding, almost mythic, as though he carried the weight of an older cinematic masculinity. I remember him vividly as General Khalid in Mukul S. Anand’s Sultanat—a performance steeped in authority and theatrical flourish. To my generation, he was the quintessential action hero, the man who immortalised the line “kutte, main tera khoon pee jaunga,” a phrase that continues to reverberate across decades of popular culture. And yet, even in these roles, I found myself drawn not to the bravado but to the actor who existed beneath it.

Years later, when I moved to Kolkata for higher studies, my relationship to Dharmendra’s cinema found new meaning. This was the early 2000s, the era when multiplex culture was reshaping how we watched films. I often went to the morning shows at INOX on Elgin Road, where tickets were cheaper and the halls nearly empty. One of the first Dharmendra performances I saw on the big screen was in Anurag Basu’s Life in a… Metro. Paired opposite Nafisa Ali, he played an aging lover returning to the fragile glow of a youthful connection. There was a tenderness in his performance, an ache, a hesitation that made the character linger long after the film ended. His final screen appearance that I watched in a theatre was in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, this time in Mumbai. As Kanwal, yearning for Jamini (Shabana Azmi), Dharmendra returned to a mode he had always excelled at: the quiet tremor of longing. It felt fitting that one of his last roles centred on memory, desire, and the unfinished stories we carry with us.

These are the Dharmendras I remember. The gentle moral force of Satyakam, the understated humour of Chupke Chupke, the commanding figure of JP Dutta’s epics, the soft-edged nostalgia of his later years. In remembering him today, I find myself returning to those early impressions formed on television. They endured not for their spectacle, but for the quiet humanity he brought to the characters.