Hema Malini and Dharmendra’s romance was the ultimate Bollywood gossip of its time, and it had all the drama of a blockbuster film. The reigning Dream Girl, Hema, and Dharmendra fell madly in love, but there was one major problem — Dharmendra was already married to his first wife, Prakash Kaur. And divorce wasn’t an option, since Prakash refused to grant him one. But in true filmy style, the two lovebirds didn’t let anything stand in their way. Dharmendra made the bold move of converting to Islam, and the couple tied the knot in a private nikah in 1980.
The drama didn’t end there. In her biography Hema Malini: Beyond the Dream Girl by Ram Kamal Mukherjee, their daughter Esha Deol revealed a surprising incident. While in the fourth grade, a classmate bluntly asked her if she had “two moms”. Shocked, little Esha clapped back, insisting she had only one mother. Esha’s classmate said, “You have two moms, right?” Esha added, “I immediately snapped back at my classmate, saying, ‘What rubbish! I have only one mother’.”
But when she brought the incident up at home, it led to a heart-to-heart with Hema Malini. She opened up, “So, that was when I understood that my mother had married someone who was already married to another lady and that they also had a family. But frankly speaking, I never felt bad about it. Till today, I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. And I give full credit to my parents for not making us ever feel uncomfortable.”
Esha shared that Dharmendra would visit them every day for a meal but never stayed overnight. When he did, they would wonder if something was wrong. Esha recalled, “When I was younger, I used to go to my friends’ houses where I would see both parents being around. That’s when I realized that it’s normal to have dads around too. But somehow, we were groomed in a way that it didn’t affect me much. I was very content with my mother and I loved my father.”
Dharmendra married his first wife, Prakash Kaur, in 1954 at the age of 19. They have four children: sons Sunny and Bobby Deol, both actors, and daughters Vijeta and Ajieta. With Hema Malini, he has two daughters – Esha and Ahana Deol.
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