Mumbai woke up strangely soft that morning. Not quiet, the city never does quiet, but gentler, like someone had turned the volume down without asking. By the time I reached Sunny Villa, people were scattered along the lane in that hesitant way crowds form when the news is too big to process. Nobody needed to say it out loud anymore. Dharmendra was gone. Eighty nine. A long life, sure, but everyone there carried the same thought: it wasn’t supposed to be today.
Someone near me kept rubbing his forehead like he was trying to push the truth back out. Another man whispered, almost annoyed, that he had just watched an old interview of Dharmendra joking about his health. That is the thing about some stars, they make you believe they will always find their way back to the light.
The heat rose slowly as the crowd drifted toward the Pawan Hans crematorium in Vile Parle. That place normally has a strange mix of airport noise and solemnity, but on this afternoon even the planes sounded like they were keeping their distance. People clutched marigolds, tissues, or nothing at all. Some had travelled across the city. Some looked like they had simply walked out of their homes the moment they heard.
When Amitabh Bachchan arrived, the chatter thinned out. He didn’t need to say anything. Decades of shared history sat on his face. Salman Khan came through with an uncharacteristic stillness, and Aamir Khan followed, blinking a bit too often, the way people do when they’re refusing to cry in public.
A little to the side, a few younger actors stood together, exchanging stories. Someone mentioned Jaideep Ahlawat talking about Dharmendra’s wicked sense of timing on set, how he could drop a line so casually it took a second to realize he had just cracked everyone up. That detail stayed with me. It sounded exactly like him, that unforced ease.
If you moved through the crowd slowly enough, you’d hear people stitching together bits of his life. A man hummed Yeh dosti quietly, as if embarrassed. A middle aged woman told her son why Veeru was every family’s favorite rogue. Two college kids scrolled through their phones, replaying that scene of Dharmendra leaping into a haystack like gravity had agreed to take the moment off.
The Prime Minister’s message calling his death the end of an era popped up on everyone’s screens. Usually those statements feel routine, but this one… well, people nodded. Not because they were supposed to, but because they knew it was true. Six decades. More than 300 films. And not a single phase of Hindi cinema where he didn’t leave fingerprints.
What made him special wasn’t the He Man image people loved to quote. It was the warmth. The slight twinkle in the eyes. The way he balanced swagger with softness, something actors today try but rarely land. Even when he was the action hero, he felt familiar, like the friendly neighbour who could throw a punch if needed but would much rather share a laugh.
As the rituals went on inside, the mood outside loosened. People weren’t whispering anymore. They were remembering him in the way Indians remember their most loved stars, through scenes and songs and oddly specific details. Someone said they first watched Phool Aur Patthar on a black and white TV that needed a smack every ten minutes. Another swore he had seen Dream Girl at least twenty times because his sister controlled the remote. None of it was poetic. All of it was sincere.
Once the crowd began thinning, I stayed back a bit. Partly for work, partly because it felt wrong to rush back into the city’s usual noise. It struck me then how Dharmendra would probably react if he saw all this fuss. He would blush a little, crack a joke about everyone overreacting, and ask someone to bring him a cup of tea. There was something beautifully unpretentious about him that even fame couldn’t scrape off.
Walking back toward the street, I passed two teenagers laughing at one of his Sholay moments, completely absorbed. And weirdly, that made the day feel lighter. That is how legends survive. Not through grand speeches or sombre crowds, but through scenes people refuse to let go of.
By the time evening pushed in and the city shook off its lull, the loss had settled into something quieter. A presence turned memory. Not tragic, just tender.
Dharmendra didn’t disappear with the day. People like him don’t. They stay tucked into the culture, into family stories, into the lines people still quote without thinking. He lives on each time someone hums an old song or reenacts that tank scene or smiles at the mention of Veeru.
Not gone. Just shifted into a place where the reel never stops.
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Sana has been covering film, fame, and everything in between for over a decade. From red carpets to rehab rumors, she brings nuance, wit, and an insider’s edge to every story. When she’s not reporting, she’s probably watching Koffee With Karan reruns or doom-scrolling celebrity IG feeds.
