Mumbai: Actress-turned-politician Hema Malini celebrates her 71st birthday October16. She made her debut in the Tamil film Ithu Sathiyam. She was also called as the Dream Girl at the prime of her acting career. Hema Malini has portrayed a number of important characters among which is ‘Basanti’ the talkative ‘tangewali’ of Sholay (1975).
If you have seen the film you must have noticed that Sanjeev Kumar and Hema Malini did not feature in a single frame together. Also in the entire film the late Sanjeev Kumar does not take Basanti’s name anywhere. This in spite of Basanti guiding Jay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra) to Thakur’s (Sanjeev Kumar) house.
Sources say that in the 1970s Sanjeev Kumar had approached the parents of Hema Malini asking her hand for marriage. However, Hema’s mother said that she would like her daughter to marry a person from the same cast and had already finalised a groom. Hema initially was not averse to tying the nuptial knot with Sanjeev Kumar, but was persuaded by her mother not to do so. According to old timers of the Hindi film industry, this issue soured the relationship between Hema and Sanjeev Kumar. So badly was Kumar in love with Hema Malini that he remained a bachelor till his death.
The other incident happened on the sets of Sholay itself. At that time, Dharmendra and Hema Malini were going steady. Forgetting that, Sanjeev Kumar proposed a second time to Hema Malini. It made both Dharmendra and Hema furious. The former then went to Ramesh Sippy, the director of Sholay, and asked him not to shoot a single scene featuring Hema and Sanjeev Kumar. At that time, Dharmendra was a huge star and the director accepted his request.
Hema Malini too was bowled over by Dharmendra’s charm and superstar image and rejected the proposal of Sanjeev Kumar.
