Veteran writer Javed Akhtar, who worked with late actor Dharmendra in films like Sholay, Seeta Aur Geeta among many others, recently recalled one of his earliest memories with the actor and shared that he was an “unusual person and an unusual actor.” He recalled an incident from the 1969 film Yakeen where Dharmendra was the lead actor, and Javed was an assistant director, and shared that at one point, Dharmendra actually apologised to him even though there was “no need for him” to do so. Dharmendra passed away on Monday at the age of 89 in Mumbai.
In a chat with NDTV, Javed shared that he was 20-year-old at the time and was working as an assistant director. Dharmendra was already an established star in the movies at this time, and Javed was working on a salary of Rs 175 per month. One of his jobs was to hand out the sheets of the scene to the actor, and during one such task, Javed made an error. He shared, “He asked me for the scene, and I gave him, perhaps, the wrong page. He got very irritated, and he threw the page back at me and said ‘Correct page do yaar (Give me the correct page)’. I was obviously a nobody, so I took that insult.” What happened next surprised Javed, as after the scene was done, Dharmendra called Javed into his room.
“He apologised to me. He said, ‘Yaar maine galat tarah se tumse baat ki thi. Asal mein meri aankh mein boht takleef ho rahi hai. Uski vajah se main bahut irritate ho jata hu takleef se. Maine jaise baat ki, voh nahi karni chahiye thi, I am sorry’ (The way I spoke to you was wrong. My eyes are bothering me a bit, which is why I am a bit irritated. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I am sorry). I was so embarrassed. There was no need for him to apologise, but that tells you that the man was humane. He was a very unusual person and an unusual actor,” Javed recalled.
Javed shared that in this film, Dharmendra was playing a double role, and one of his characters had light eyes, and for that, he needed to wear contact lenses, which irritated his eyes and made him lose patience. Javed said that he found new respect for Dharmendra after this day, as the star had apologised to a novice. “If you are somebody, people are good to you; that is not surprising, but when you are a nobody and if somebody of that status is kind to you, nice to you, talks to you politely, jokes with you, then you are convinced that here is a very nice person who is humane. He had no need to be nice to me,” he shared.
In later years, Javed wrote one of Dharmendra’s most popular characters, Veeru from Sholay. He also wrote films like Yaadon Ki Baaraat and Seeta Aur Geeta. Such was Dharmendra’s faith in Javed that when he was launching his son Sunny Deol in the movies with Betaab, he called Javed to write the film.
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