I had never thought of marrying Dharmendra, says Dream Girl

Mumbai: They may have been happily married for several years now, but 'Dream Girl' Hema Malini says that she never thought of marrying him. In her biography 'Beyond the Dream girl', penned by Ram Kamal Mukherjee, Hema Malini says,'the truth was that I didn’t know what I wanted. I knew that I was attracted to him (Dharmendra) but the relationship had no future.' 'In the beginning, we were just good friends.

I enjoyed his company. We were paired opposite each other in so many films … there came a time when we were shooting together not just for days or weeks but for months. Soon, it became a habit to be with each other all the time… ‘As time passed, it became more and more impossible to describe what I felt for him, or better still define the relationship. To be honest, I never thought of marrying him,' the actress said. 'My only argument is that I didn’t fall in love consciously. It’s funny, but I always used to think that whenever I marry, it would be with someone like him. I never thought of it being him, though.

It’s destiny and my fortune,'she said. The actress says that the increasing stories of her affair with Dharmendra and delay in her marriage led her father to accompany her for shootings, something which he had never done in his life. 'The magazines were full of stories of my affair. Journalists were writing something or the other all the time that rocked the peace at home and led to mounting tension.

At that point in time I stopped entertaining film journalists as things were getting worse,' she said. 'My father, suddenly panic-stricken, began summoning astrologers and pundits. He wanted to know what was in my kundali. The delay in my marriage began to worry him, and this tension made him accompany me for my shootings, something which he had never done in his life,' she said. 'In 1975, during the outdoor shooting of Ramanand Sagar’s Charas (1976), we were to be in Malta for weeks.

And since I was to be shooting with him (Dharmendra), my father insisted on coming along with me. Often, the cast and crew had to travel together in a car. My father was not happy with this at all. He would order me in Tamil – so that Dharam-ji would not understand what he was saying – to sit in one corner while he would try and sit in the middle.

But Dharam-ji would make up some clever excuse or the other to get in from my side, so that I would end up sitting in the middle and he would be beside me,' Hema says in her biography, which was revealed by Bollywood diva Deepika Padukone on Monday evening. Admitting that she was attracted to Dharmendra , Hema said that there was an air of serenity about him which drew her towards him. 'It’s difficult for me to describe what I went through in those days. I liked him – I couldn’t deny that he was attractive and strong and there was an air of serenity about him.

I tried turning away from him. But I couldn’t,' she said. There was something inherently good about him. Strangely, my father had no problems with Dharam-ji other than the one related to me. In fact, they got along so well whenever I wasn’t around. They would always be laughing and I would want to freeze the moment. If only they could be like that forever. Everyone in my family adored him … just not as a prospective son-in-law,' she said. 'Beyond the Dream Girl' has been brought out by Harper Collins publication. (UNI)