Main Bhi Rajesh Khanna....

Ali Peter John

Life was not the same again for Rajesh Khanna after the grand success of “Aaradhana" and people had forgotten his early flops like “Raaz",“Aakhri Khat"and “Baharon Ke Sapne" even though the films were directed by big names like Ketan Anand and Nasir Husain and had soulful music.

“Aaradhana" directed by the veteran Shakti Samanta and with Sharmila Tagore and Subhash Ghai, the aspiring actor in a bit role and Farida Jalal in a parallel role. Rajesh Khanna signed eight big films within a week. He was the new superstar, the kind Indian audiences had never seen before. As is well-known now, his fans tried every possible way to get a glimpse of him and even kissed his cars, the walls of his bungalow, “Aashirwaad" and girls got married to his photographs and even kept the photographs under their pillows in the hope of seeing him in their dreams. Stardom had been crazy, but it was not so crazy before...

Every phenomenon or success story has imitators who tried their best to be other Rajesh Khannas, but there could only be over Rajesh Khanna...

But there were men who tried. One of the first efforts was made by Kiran Kumar who was from the FTII and whose father was the well-known villain of the sixties, Jeevan. There was even an effort to make a film called “Savera" which was to be directed by Rajesh Khanna's guru, V.K Sharma and to add to the madness, the superstar Rajesh Khanna was invited as a chief guest to the muhurat which was held in the compound of Natraj Studios and outside the office of Shakti Samanta. That was the only time when Kiren Kumar could even think of reaching anywhere near ‘the get of love'(Rajesh Khanna).

It was only the beginning. There was a young man whose family was associated with the advertising world and his name was Raman Khanna. He, his family and friends believed that he could be another Rajesh Khanna and it is said that it was with the money of his family that K.A Abbas gave him his first break as a hero in “Faasla" in which Shabana Azmi made her debut. The film was a ‘rehash' of “Awaara" which was also written by Abbas. The film however flopped, but Raman Khanna still felt that he stood some chance and said that he would be happy if he even could ‘achieve one-tenth of the success of Rajesh Khanna'. He never did a film again, but married the popular South Indian actress Swapna and has been doing some rare kind of entertainment shows in some of the lesser known countries with artists trained by his own academy called ‘Sangini'.

I.S Johar who was always known as an iconoclast besides being a very popular comedian, loved making his own kind of films with duplicates of popular stars. He found a look alike of Rajesh Khanna in a tailoring shop in Andheri East and gave him the name Rakesh Khanna and signed him for his film “5 Rifle" in which he had duplicates of Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor and Shatrughan Sinha, but the only duplicate who found work in a Gujarati film and a B-grade devotional.

The Rajesh Khanna wave was so strong that there were young man who had done resemblance to him came to India from countries like Mauritius and Fiji only to end up as a junior artist or a party of crowd scene or at best dancers in a group. And what is shocking is that none of his men went back home and even died in Mumbai because they had told their families and friends that they would not return on this they had made it at least a little like Rajesh Khanna.

These are some striking examples of men who wanted to be other Rajesh Khannas without knowing that god had time to create only one genuine Rajesh Khanna.

His kurtas became the national dress of all the youth and when he played the cancer patient in “Anand", there were hundreds of young man who pretended to be suffering from cancer, especially if they had woo girls.

Rajesh Khanna's first secretary was Gurnaam who was his friend from their theatre days with V.K Sharma, both Gurnaam and V.K Sharma died of alcoholism. Acha Anand, one of the men from the Anand family was his other secretary and so was Yousuf. They all considered Rajesh Khanna to be a lucky mascot. Acha was also the secretary of Shabana Azmi and Yousuf was a secretary of Sharmila Tagore and Jackie Shroff for a short time.

Working with Rajesh Khanna even gave his domestic servants and especially his chauffeur Kabir who after leaving Rajesh Khanna joined Mithun Chakraborty and steered him towards stardom and then left Mithun to join the new star Shah Rukh Khan. Kabir had got so much of the Rajesh Khanna aires an attitude that made him believe that he was lucky for anyone who wanted to be a star and it was this attitude that finally led to his destruction and when last seen, he was in a hut in Versova village.

That's why people who had seen the rise and fall of India's greatest superstar said that he had the power to make people and break people.

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