SUPERSTAR RAJESH KHANNA KE KUCH MASTAANE AUR DUSRE RANGEEN AUR SANGEEN ROOP .....

( UNKE PUNYATITHI PAR )....

I first heard of a handsome young man called Jatin Khanna from a veteran theatre director. He said, the young man Jatin was a good theatre actor at the Intercollegiate level and he was the adopted son of his uncle who was a business man who had his own building, "Khanna House" near the Charni Road station and a little before a very old cinema house called Central.

I was completely dependent on all my information about Hindi Cinema on two magazines, Screen and Filmfare which I could find only at the Taj Hair Cutting Saloon, thanks to Birbal, the barber I had to sit with even though he bored me to death with his non-stop jabbering and spitting out his paan. His favourite question to me would always be, "baba abhi vakil banne mein kitne saal baaki hai?". It was while I was going through the pages of Filmfare that I read about a certain Jatin Khanna who was selected by a group of producers and Filmfare who they would help in grooming as an actor. I had also read that another man, Subhash Ghai was also in the race but had lost to Jatin by one vote.

I was in my first year in college when I found a huge set being put up on a ground behind the Rashtriya Metal Company. Visiting the sets became a habit only because Asha Parekh who was a very big and popular actress was the heroine of a film called "Bahaaro Ke Sapne". I asked one of the unit members who the hero was and he pointed out to a new man who he said was chosen as the hero because of the producer's meharbani. There were other unit memebers who referred to that same man and said, "saala, woh gorkha hero hai". I saw people passing by him without giving him a look and only being interested in seeing Asha Parekh. There were others who called him a "faaltu hero". The man they said was called Jatin Khanna, but the producers had given him a new name, Rajesh Khanna. The film made in black and white was a big flop. The same Rajesh Khanna did other black and white films like "Raaz" and "Aakhri Khat" which had also flopped. 

He kept being in the news because of the interest the five producers who had chosen him in the contest were interested in keeping him in the limelight because they according to the contract made with him would have to make at least one film with him. 

It was the turn of the famous filmmaker, Shakti Samanta to make his next film with this "gorkha hero". He played safe by making his film called "Aradhana" in colour and had his favourite heroine, Sharmila Tagore to work as his heroine which she did reluctantly and he had the great S. D Burman to score the music and when he fell ill during the making of the film, he was replaced by his son, R. D Burman. It was some kind of a miracle when people all over expected the film to be very good.

I realised how people reacted to the film when every class in my college was empty for the first three lectures and all the students had rushed to the nearest theatre, Navrang to see the film. At 12 noon, Rajesh Khanna was still a struggling star, at 3 pm he was a superstar and from that day in 1969 to the end of 1972, he was the ruling superstar and other famous stars had to only look at his rise in despair and even with jealousy. The only star who reacted in his own way was Dev Anand. When asked what he thought about the new superstar, he just waved both his hands in the air and said, "talk to me after twenty-five years".

Rajesh Khanna literally ruled the hearts and even the minds of people of all ages as one film of his after another were declared box-office blockbusters.

His smile made girls and young women swoon and even faint. The same women went up to his house to catch a glimpse of him and couldn't, kissed the walls of his bungalow, "Ashirvaad" and were satisfied. There were other young women who believed that they were married to him and there were others who kept his photographs under their pillows in the hope of seeing him in their dreams and there were women who wrote love letters to him in their blood with doctors' certificates attached to prove that it was indeed their blood. He made the kurta which was once considered the dress of the coolie or the farmer became a style statement after he started wearing kurtas in his films and in real life. 

He had grown so popular that ministers and governors and other men and women avoided being with him at the same functions and on the same dais. He had in a way taken over the entire country by just a winkle of his eyes or his turning his head and smiling and speaking about love like no other hero before him had spoken. Writers, producers and directors went out of their ways to get him to do their films come what may and a time came when he stopped being human and believed he was god and the millions of his fans made him believe that he was a competitor only for god. 

Things however changed when a row of his films flopped and the same people who worshipped him started looking away from him and there was a vacancy for a new god...

It was around this time that an entirely unexpected kind of flop hero with an unusual name like Amitabh Bachchan was making the rounds and even was willing to play second fiddle to Rajesh Khanna. It was at this time that Rajesh Khanna was doing a film called "Baawarchi" in which Jaya Bhaduri was in the female lead. She was in love with the struggling Amitabh Bachchan. Khanna once came across Bachchan and Jaya in a studio and very loudly said, "Yeh industry ko kya hogaya hai?, Aaj kal kaise kaise ajeeb logo ko hero bananeka khwab dekhte hai. Arre, yeh lambu jis din hero banega, main industry chhod dunga". Then looking at Jaya, he said , " Arre ladki, tumhara bhavishya itna mahaan hai, tum iss lambu ke saath kyun barbaad hona chaahti ho?".

He kept falling from his pedestal and with just one film, "Zanjeer", the lambu hero made him cry. At a very big party, he saw how the same fans grabbed their autograph books from him and rushed to the new superstar, Amitabh Bachchan. He walked out of the party and drank himself till night and then went up to the terrace of his house and cried out, " why me, god?". It was the beginning of the end of a great era which could have lasted longer if only if the superstar had not believed that he was god.

He tried politics to regain his popularity, but he won the elections to the Lok Sabha beating his colleague, Shatrughan Sinha but lost heavily in the next election to L. K Advani and that was the end of his political career. 

He tried producing his own films and then tried making TV serials, but success had decided to make him an example for others to follow. Nothing he did succeeded. On the contrary, he had lost his family as his wife Dimple separated from him, taking away their two daughters. He was in heavy debts. He had heavy income tax problems and had to even mortgage a part and then his entire bungalow with just one room left for him. He had no car till he bought a second hand Maruti 800 and whenever he had to go for the few functions he was invited to, he borrowed a Mercedes from one of his rich Christian friends. The only property in Mumbai he had were the three floors of a building on Linking Road, Bandra in which he had enough space to have some kind of an office.

He drank heavily with the few friends who were more of hang ons (chamchas)

and slept till the next afternoon. He drove to office in his Maruti 800 and slipped into his office so that no one could  know. He sat at the window facing the main road for hours and waited for someone to come but no one came. He started drinking again as soon as the sun set and drank till he was stable enough to drive back home. The only man who stood by him for more than forty years was his Man Friday, Bala who tried to take care of him, but his care was of no use to a man who was determined to destroy himself. He had a brief affair with an intellectual kind of actress, but she hit the final nail in the coffin he was building for himself when she ditched him the moment she knew that he was dying of liver cancer.

His family which now included the big star Akshay Kumar who had married his daughter, Twinkle came back to him to make him feel good and took him out for picnics and tried their best to make him feel good, but all their efforts were in vain.

The last desperate thing he did was when he got drunk at 10.30 in the morning and went up to the  Rizvi College and sat on the bonnet of his car and started teasing and using dirty language against girls and the same police who also treated him like god once had to reprimand him for his behaviour and warn him not to repeat such behaviour again. 

On December, 29, he normally had the kind of parties that kings could envy, but slowly people forgot him and his birthday when the number of bouquets were so many that they had to be lined up on the road from his house to Bandstand where a young boy would become a superstar and have his own bungalow one day. On one such night, he made his man call me and ask me to join him for drinks as there was no one around him and unfortunately it was past midnight and I had finished my own quota of drinks and just couldn't think of going to his office where he was sitting alone with only Bala for company.

A few days later, I was supposed to meet Aamir Khan who lived just behind the one-time superstar's house and I received a call saying, "Rajesh Khanna died just now at 1.40 pm. I rushed to Ashirvaad and did not wait for anyone to stop me because there was  no one to stop me as he had no security guards now. I was shocked to see the condition of the drawing room of the great Rajesh Khanna. It was all in a dirty mess. Bala called some men and put things in order and placed a huge portrait of the superstar at his best on the wall. Four men went up and brought down his dead body wrapped in a dirty blanket and placed it on a bedsheet laid on the ground. That was my last darshan of the man who was god once. His son-in-law and others took over and the next day he had a funeral worthy of kings and Shaikhs, but I who was with him in his worst times was pushed out and not allowed to say my final goodbye to him. A day later, his family organised a grand condolence meeting at the Taj Lands End. I was very sick, but I still made it, thanks to a friend called Kalyan Sen, but I was not even allowed to go anywhere near the door as a burly looking man in white said in a very nasty tone, "Have you been invited?" This meeting is only for those who were very close to Kakaji. Sorry, you can't go in".

How I wished the Rajesh Khanna with whom I spent the worst days of his life and who treated me like a brother would have heard that man talking to me!    AISA KOI DIN AUR AISA KOI SAAL NAHI HAI JAB KAKAJI KO DUNIYA KE KOI NA KOI JAGAH YAAD NAHI KIYA JAATA HAI