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Dharmendra is one of the most celebrated actors of the Indian film industry, is popular for his stunning looks and golden hear​t, a rarest of rare combinations that sets him apart from the rest. He died a couple of weeks short of his 90 th birthday, last week. Though I have never had a conversation with him, he has had a presence in my life, intriguing me like millions of Indians, for all the obvious reasons. Here, I try to look at his life in words of people who knew him ve

Most memories are like dreams — intangible, fuzzy, fleeting and subliminal. However, sometimes, they have an exceptional timelessness that causes them to resurface at the mere hint of reflection. The collective national grief at Dharmendra’s demise impels me to go down memory lane — almost six decades in time. It was a lazy Sunday in the summer holidays of 1969. I sat with a pile of Enid Blytons in the outer courtyard of our old home on Station Road in Lucknow. A strapping ca