Dharmendra the Father: Lessons, Love, and Legacy

From strict rules to protective gestures, Dharmendra’s parenting shaped his six children across two marriages.

Transcript

00:00This is not the story of the he-man of Bollywood.

00:06This is the story of the father his children just lost.

00:09And the story started in a small home in Punjab.

00:15Dharmeen Ravan said he couldn't even tell his father he wanted to be an actor.

00:19His father, a strict school teacher, let him sleep beside him one winter night,

00:22but then asked him to recite tables.

00:24That memory shaped him because it taught him that a father's love can be firm and still tender.

00:29The mother always scared us. We thought that the father was angry.

00:32And after the father, the father didn't even know what happened.

00:36With his first wife Prakash Kaur, he had four children, Sunny, Bobby, Vijeta and Ajita.

00:41Years later, with Hema Malini, he had two more daughters, Isha and Ahana.

00:46He is such a large-hearted person. He has been able to balance out both the sides due to him.

00:53Bobby slept in his parents' room until he was 14, so Dharmeen Ravan could keep him safe.

00:57Dharmeen Ravan didn't let Bobby attend star kids parties, as he never liked the flashy film world.

01:01His daughters felt it too. Whenever he visited, Isha and Ahana would quietly change from jeans into salwar kameez.

01:07Not out of fear, but out of respect for their old school father.

01:10I think he was just very possessive and protective as a father.

01:13But there was one truth Dharmeen Ravan admitted only in his later years, a regret he carried.

01:18He wished Sunny and Bobby spent more time with him. He said they were scared of him.

01:21Just the way he had once been scared of his father.

01:24My father taught me what my father taught me, and I didn't teach him.

01:30So that was going on.

01:32He remembered coming home late to find his parents waiting for a few minutes of his time.

01:36And he realized he was repeating the cycle.

01:38Dharmeen Ravan was a complex father, strict, because how he was raised, loving, because discipline without affection meant nothing.

01:44Regretful, because even legends wish they could do things differently.

01:48I have yet to give something, I have yet to do something, something very close to life.

01:54Today as the industry says goodbye to a superstar, his children remember the man behind the stage.

01:59And I think they don't make men like that today.