There are many stories about Rajesh Khanna, some true, others not. One of the tragically true ones is about how he made Gulzar wait the entire night for a story narration. The poet, who sleeps at 9 pm, waited with mounting impatience for the superstar to emerge from the inner chambers from his castle where Gulzar Saab could hear sounds of inebriated merriment. He finally left at 2 am to never return again. The story above epitomizes the downfall of Indian cinema’s biggest superstar, whose 81st birth anniversary took place on December 29.
Rajesh Khanna's golden period lasted exactly three years. But the country never known a bigger star. Between 1969 and 1971, Rajesh Khanna was the undisputed king of the world. And he never let anyone forget it. As hit after hit flowed out of his repertoire, Khanna climbed to a position where all his contemporaries began to feel seriously left out in the rat race. Jeetendra, who was a close friend of Khann,a openly though good naturedly grumbled about Khanna cornering all the plum projects that were available for the Bollywood leading man in the closing year of the 1960s and the opening years of the 1970s.
When Rajesh Khanna ruled, the competition simply vanished. Khanna’s track record during that period was beyond phenomenal. It was staggering! Beginning with Shakti Samanta's Aradhana which came and blew open the box office in 1969, the hits simply flew out like there was no tomorrow. Aradhana was quickly followed by Narendra Bedi's Bandhan, B R Chopra's Ittefaq, Raj Khosla's Do Raaste, Shakti Samanta's Kati Patang, Manmohan Desai's Sachcha Jhutha, Dulal Guha's Dushman and J Om Prakash's Aan Milo Sajna, all within a span of three years.
No star in the history of Indian cinema had so many hits flowing out so fast and furiously. With Chinappa Devar's Haathi Mere Saathi (arguably the biggest hit of his career), Khanna's career peaked. The Khanna frenzy touched the sky. Kids loved their haathi uncle as much their grandmothers adored Anand Babu who hated tears.
After his death, Mumtaz, with whom Khanna did a truckload of hits from Do Raaste in 1969 to Prem Kahani in 1975, recalled, “My jodi with Rajesh Khanna was lucky. We never suffered a flop. Our last film together, Aaina, didn’t click but it was just a guest appearance for him. Do Raaste, our first film together was a big hit. The songs did it. ‘Bindiya chamkegi’ and ‘Chhup gaye saare nazaare’ became very popular. We did a whole lot of films after that right until I got married and quit the industry. That allowed me the chance to interact with him fairly closely. Shaadi mein jaise saare milaaye jaate hain, hum donon ki jodi ke sitaare milte the. Our onscreen pair seemed blessed by divinity.”
Sharmila Tagore’ with whom Khanna did the iconic Aradhana and Amar Prem, recalled, “I was first-hand witness to the hysteria he had caused. When we did our first film, Aradhana together, I had no idea what was to unfold. Suddenly, it got impossible to walk from my makeup room to the set without getting mobbed. The entire area used to be crammed with girls who’d fall all over him. I hadn’t, and haven’t witnessed anything like it. Did he change after the success? Of course he did. He’d arrive late on set. And still, he didn’t manage to beat Shatrughan Sinha and Sanjeev Kumar when it came to trooping in late. Although we had a great working relationship, and the films we did together were a success, we’d constantly argue about one thing. Both, Kaka and I liked to put forward the same profile — the left side of the face — before the camera. The cinematographers were driven up the wall trying to accommodate us both.”
Zeenat Aman added, “Kakajee was already a big star when we did our first film, Ajnabee together. It was directed by Shakti Samanta, with whom he had worked on huge hits like Aradhana. So, I was this outsider, the newcomer. But not for a minute did he make me feel that. He was reserved, yes. But so was I. We had some fun times together. We shot a song atop a train (‘Hum dono do premi’) long before Shah Rukh’s ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’. Kakajee was so good with songs and romance. After Ajnabee, we did four films together, and got to know each other during Aashiq Hoon Baharon Ka, Jaanwar and Jaana: Let’s Fall In Love. In Jaana…, there was this bit that I considered a high-point. He sang a medley of all his evergreen romantic hits for me. By the time we did our last film together, he had turned far more introspective. He confided in me about how he wanted to create a museum of his memorabilia. We didn’t end up keeping in touch.”
Recalled Asha Parekh, “We first worked together in an experimental film Baharon Ke Sapne. He was not a star then. But we all could see that special spark in him. By the time we did our second film, Kati Patang, everything had changed. He was a superstar; the kind Indian cinema hasn’t witnessed. Girls would run after him, tear his clothes, kiss his car, stand outside his bungalow for a darshan for hours. I thought it was fairly entertaining. I remember this time we were shooting the song, ‘Jis gali mein tera ghar na ho balma’ for Kati Patang in Nainital by a lake, and we had to stop because of the hordes that had gathered to see him. By the time we did Aan Milo Sajna, success had brought him confidence. He talked more, was far more expressive and fun. The song, ‘Achcha to hum chalte hain’ in Aan Milo Sajna, was again hell to shoot because we wanted to capture the sunset, and light was playing hide and-seek. But Kaka was patient. He loved shooting songs.”
Then, it all ended. Suddenly the downslide started. In 1972, six of Rajesh Khanna's prestigious projects bombed one after another. Epitaphs for his career were written, and not unhappily. Though Khanna bounced back with some notable hits in 1974 (Aap Ki Kasam, Premnagar and Roti) the best was behind the nation's beloved Kakajee.
Stories of Khanna's arrogance and high-handedness had begun to gain credence. Manmohan Desai, a close friend of Khanna after two blockbusters Sachcha Jhutha and Roti switched to Amitabh Bachchan with Amar Akbar Anthony, and there was no looking back to Khanna. Gulzar wanted to cast Khanna in a film. He was made to wait in the living room of Khanna’s iconic bungalow Ashirwaad all evening while the star drank and whooped it up with his friends/chamchas inside and then told to come another day.
There were stories of how the superstar insisted on setting up projects entirely on his own terms. The music had to be by R.D. Burman and none other, although the combo had run out of steam. By the time Khanna and RD worked together in Alag Alag in 1985, which was directed by the Khanna's loyalist Shakti Samanta for Khanna to romance his real-life love-interest Tina Munim, the creative juices had run dry. The film came after nearly a year of ‘together’ interviews where the fast-fading star and the pretty starlet spoke about everything they shared, including a lungi and toothbrush.
Alag Alag flopped, and so did all the other films that Khanna did with Ms Munim excluding Sawan Kumar's Sautan, the surprise success of 1983, the year when Khanna had a cloudburst of temporary success with Agar Tum Na Hote, Souten and most notably Avtaar.
The trouble with Rajesh Khanna's career was excessive subjectivity. He not only mixed business with pleasure, he even made sure that the business of pleasure was brought home to his famous bungalow Aashirwad where every evening, the Khanna durbar of sycophants and loyalists gathered for drinks and gupshup.
Anju Mahendroo, Khanna's steady girlfriend of seven years and a practical woman, hated the yes-men who crowded Rajesh Khanna's life and allowed him no room to grow. She wanted all the fakes and flatterers to go. When they wouldn't be shown the door, Anju quit the relationship.
Said one of Rajesh Khanna's heroines, “When Anju left, Kaka he hurled downhill at a rapid pace paving the way for Amitabh Bachchan to become the next superstar. If Kaka had not allowed the super-success of a spate of films in 1969-72 to blind his better judgment, he would have continued as the reigning superstar for at least another decade and the Bachchan factor may not have happened when it did.”
Most of Rajesh Khanna's well-wishers felt his overnight marriage to Dimple Kapadia in 1973 was a disastrous mistake for both of them.
Said a friend of the actor, “Dimple was half (of) Kaka's age. She was completely besotted by him. Kaka was flattered to be getting so much attention from Raj Kapoor's heroine. He always had a fascination for all the things that Raj Saab discovered. When on the spur of the moment he proposed to Dimple, she quickly accepted. Kaka made her throw the ring that was gifted to her by Rishi Kapoor into the sea to prove her loyalty to him. Drama was always a constant in the superstar's life.”
The stormy marriage to Dimple lasted for 5-6 years. When she walked out with their two daughters to pursue a career, Rajesh Khanna was left in their bungalow Aashirwad with a huge persecution complex and little else to keep him company.
Said a male co-star, “Kaka loved to play the martyr both in his real life and reel. He would justify his transgressions as husband and family man by arguing that he was misunderstood. On screen, he repeatedly revealed a death-wish. It's no coincidence that his character died in film after film: Aradhana, Safar, Anand, Andaz, Namak Haraam. He saw himself as a combination of Guru Dutt and Devdas and his roles repeatedly reflected this obsession.”
The story goes that during the shooting of Namak Haraam, Hrishikesh Mukherjee was not sure which of the two heroes would finally die. It could have been either Khanna or the Big B. But Khanna insisted on getting the privilege. On the day that the director was supposed to shoot the death scene, Khanna placed a garlanded picture of himself on the wall.
Getting his way became a matter of habit for Khanna. In his head he remained a superstar, albeit in exile, even when the number of guests at Aashirwad dwindled to nothing. In their defence it must be said Khanna's friends were not treated well.
Shakti Samanta, who cast Khanna in almost all his films between 1969 and 1985, was persuaded to cast Rajesh Khanna's sister-in-law Simple Kapadia opposite Khanna in the otherwise-watchable Anurodh. The film bombed. Aradhana not only gave the industry one of its most beloved star pairs (Rajesh-Sharmila), it also started a durable friendship between Khanna and the film's director. Shakti Samanta, music composer R D Burman and Rajesh Khanna became an inseparable trio of friends.
But the 'camp' culture, which the slipping superstars patented, also isolated him from a major chunk of talent in the industry. Yash Chopra was a very close friend of Khanna from the time the two worked together in Ittefaq in 1969. Naturally, when Yash Chopra broke away from his brother B R Chopra to direct and produce Daag in 1973, he cast Khanna in what turned out to be one of the star's bigger and final hits.
But after that, the cracks began to show in the Yash Chopra-Rajesh Khanna friendship. Not too many people know Khanna was to play the lead in Deewaar. He demanded some changes in Salim-Javed's script. He was replaced by the Big B.
Career blunders multiplied. In 1979, Khanna launched his ambitious epic production Majnoon to be directed by the Pakeezah director Kamal Amrohi. The project never went beyond the grand mahurat. A few years later, the fading superstar ate back his own words about never working with his wife and invited Dimple to co-star with him in Jai Shiv Shankar (the title tried desperately to evoke the magic of a song that Khanna lip-synched to glory). That project too was aborted. By this time, the Khanna phenomenon survived solely on nostalgia.
By the time the 1970s ended the show was over for Rajesh Khanna. But while the superstardom lasted, it remained unique in its impact. Churning out a plethora of hits, he never shied away from experimenting with characters. Early in his superstardom, Khanna played a killer on the run in Ittefaq. In Amar Prem, he happily took a backseat to Sharmila Tagore and child artiste Master Bobby. In Anand, considered his best performance, Khanna had no leading lady. In Basu Bhattacharya's Aavishkar, the superstar enacted eerily real scenes from a troubled marriage. In Red Rose, he played psychotic killer. In Bawarchi, he donned baggy half-trousers to play cook to a dysfunctional perpetually-grumbling family.
Interestingly, Jaya Bhaduri, who played the lead in Bawarchi, was not cast opposite Rajesh Khanna. The two never worked together. And after a guest appearance in Andaz, neither was Khanna cast with the other reigning queen of the 1970s Hema Malini until Premnagar when Khanna's career was waning and it was no longer enough to sell a film on his name.
What finally and actually finished off Rajesh Khanna's superstardom was the games he played. He happily apportioned plum roles between his two favourite heroines Sharmila Tagore and Mumtaz and then in an interview he spoke slyly about how one of them would sulk when he spent time with the other. Understandably, the two ladies didn't take too kindly to this sort of true confession. They kept a distance from him thereafter. So did most of those who loved Rajesh Khanna, including his family and fans who returned just in time for the final chapter in the phenomenon’s life story.
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