To the relief of fans and well-wishers, veteran actor Dharmendra was discharged from Breach Candy Hospital earlier this week. He is now recovering at his Juhu residence, surrounded by his close family members, including his sons Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol. Over the past week, both Sunny and Bobby were seen visiting the hospital regularly and standing by their father’s side. In the past, Sunny and Bobby have often said that respect their father immensely and because of that, there has always been some distance between them. Dharmendra too, acknowledged this in an earlier interview and said that he wishes that his sons were friendlier with him, as he missed this equation with his father as well.
In a chat shared on Asian Paints’ YouTube channel, Dharmendra had said, “Sunny, Bobby are scared of me, and I want them to sit with me, talk to me. Today, I feel that if my father had been my friend, it would have been so nice. We really miss certain things; friendship is very important. I miss them. They don’t sit with me at all. They come and say, ‘Papa, I’m going for a shoot,’ and leave.”
He went on to says that his sons’ behaviour reminded him of his own relationship with his father. He shared, “I used to see my father sitting on a chair, talking to the watchman, resting his head on his hand, always thinking about something. So I would ask, ‘Babuji, what happened? Do you need something? Tell me, I’ll bring it.’ He would say, ‘No son, I have servants, a house, everything. What do I need? Just come home early from your shoots, sit with me for a while.’ When I heard that, I hugged him and left. And when I returned in the evening, I would see my mother sitting on the bed, and when I asked her, she would say the same thing. They just wanted my company.”
Recently, Bobby Deol also said something similar in his interview with Humans of Bombay, where he reflected on how the dynamics between parents and children change with time. He said, “When you’re growing up, you get confused between respect and being scared. But it wasn’t being scared, it was respect. But we didn’t know how to communicate easily with our parents. But the story has changed now. The whole thing is reversed. They’ve become older, so vulnerable. You have to look after them. Things change, that’s the circle of life.”
