There have been a lot of talks around why Hema Malini was nowhere to be seen at Dharmendra's prayer meet, which had been organised by his first wife, Prakash Kaur and his children from the first marriage, actors Sunny and Bobby Deol. While there has been a lot of speculation about her not being invited to it at all, on the other hand, there have also been rumours about Hema Malini not accepting the invite. Recently, columnist and author Shobhaa De mentioned that, in reality, the Dream Girl of Bollywood had been sidelined by Dharmendra's family from his first marriage.
It should, however, be noted that on the day that Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol organised a prayer meet for their father, Hema Malini, on the other hand, had organised a Gita path at home. A few days later, she too had organised a prayer meet in Delhi. In a recent interview with Barkha Dutt, Shobhaa De opened up about how Hema Malini was completely 'left out' by Dharmendra's family from his first marriage and how she chose to keep her dignity intact even though she could have taken over at that point.
De said, "Must have been a particularly difficult and hard decision... To be totally left out by the first family from something that she had spent 45 years of her own life... Nourishing, cherishing, which had enriched her life. She had two daughters from this marriage. It must have hurt terribly, but she kept all that for her own privacy. However, she wished to deal with it, and when she did have a public function, I thought she conducted it with utmost dignity, not just for herself but for the person she had lost."
The author stressed the fact that Hema could have easily and rightfully "hijacked those emotional moments", but the actress put her dignity over everything else, especially "one-upmanship."
De went on to mention, "Given the fact that Hema is a towering personality herself, the idea that she chose dignity over making a public display of one-upmanship, I think, says a lot about her character. She could so easily have, in a way, it's not a nice word but, hijacked those emotional moments right after Dharam ji passed away. The media would have loved to cover every tear and every gasp that she may have taken and intruded into her privacy and completely stripped her of the dignity that obviously matters so much to her."
For those unversed, Hema Malini is Dharmendra's second wife. The actor was earlier married to Prakash Kaur. While, Dharmendra has four children from his first marriage- Sunny, Bobby, Vijeta, and Ajeeta, Dharmendra has two daughters from his second marriage with Hema Malini- Esha and Ahana.
Dharmendra died on November 24 at the age of 89, only a few days prior to turning 90. The legendary actor will be seen on the big screen with the release of 'Ikkis'.
