New Delhi, 24 Nov

Long before he became one of Hindi cinema’s biggest stars, a young Dharmendra once wandered straight into Dilip Kumar’s home, right up to his bedroom, before fleeing in panic when the legendary actor woke up to find a stranger standing at his door.

Dharmendra, who built a towering career over 65 years with more than 300 films and passed away in Mumbai on Monday at 89, recounted this 1952 incident in the ‘Reminiscences’ section of Dilip Kumar’s autobiography The Substance and the Shadow.

He wrote that as a second-year college student from Ludhiana, he travelled to Bombay simply to meet his idol, whose performance in Shaheed had deeply moved him. Without any hesitation, he entered Dilip Kumar’s Pali Mala home, climbed the stairs and reached a bedroom where the actor was asleep.

Dilip Kumar woke up, startled.

Dharmendra froze.

Realising the gravity of what he had done, the young visitor bolted out of the house and ran until he found a café, where he sat down with a glass of lassi and reflected on how reckless his intrusion had been. Coming from rural Punjab, where homes were open, and people walked in freely, he said he had failed to recognise that this was “Bombay, the big city”.

Six years later, destiny brought Dharmendra back to Bombay, this time as a winner of the United Producers and Filmfare Talent Contest. During a photoshoot, he met Farida, Dilip Kumar’s sister, and requested her to arrange a meeting with the star he still considered an elder brother.

To his disbelief, he was invited to the Pali Hill home the next evening.

Dilip Kumar, he recalled, welcomed him warmly, offered him a chair beside him on the lawn, and spoke gently about the struggles of entering films from a non-filmi background. Dharmendra said he listened “spellbound” as the star spoke in English, Punjabi and Urdu in his soft, refined voice.

Before he left, Dilip Kumar took him upstairs, picked a sweater from his cupboard and gave it to him because it was a chilly night and Dharmendra was dressed lightly.

“He hugged me and saw me off at the gate. I can still feel the warmth of that hug,” Dharmendra wrote.

In later years, the two met often, but Dharmendra said he never approached Dilip Kumar as an equal. Instead, it was always Dilip Kumar who reached out and held his hand.

Dharmendra kept a photograph of Dilip Kumar alongside those of his parents and sons, a daily reminder of the man he once admired from afar and later came to know with affection.