Inside Dharmendra's wild love story: Women who shaped his life

Dharmendra remained Bollywood's last true romantic —messy and magnificently human

- BY MANJUSHA RADHAKRISHNAN

Dharmendra remained Bollywood's most irresistible contradiction till the very end — a man who lived with both hands open, heart first, logic later.

Two wives, six children, thirteen grandchildren and an army of fans who loved him, not despite the mess, but because of it. The man once called the 'He-Man of Hindi cinema' never pretended to be perfect.

He just loved like he fought onscreen — all in.

Long before the fame, Dharmendra was a small-town boy who married Prakash Kaur at nineteen. Together, they raised four children — Sunny, Vijeta, Ajeeta, and Bobby — and built a family rooted in simplicity.

Rewrote the rulebook

Then came the camera, the adulation, and a film called Dil Bhi Tera Hum Bhi Tere (1960).

If Bollywood ever had a love story that defied reason and rewrote the rulebook, it was Dharmendra and Hema Malini. She was the ethereal “Dream Girl” - elegant, disciplined, devastatingly self-contained. He was Punjab's charming rebel who made romance look like rebellion.

In 1980, Dharmendra married Hema Malini without divorcing Prakash Kaur. Two house-