The mesmerising and mysterious love story of amitabh bachchan and rekha

Ali Peter John

I have loved and lost , but I continue to love and now at seventy ,I am in love like never before .

I love "LOVE".I love lovers and believe that true lovers are as good as God .I have been observing the flourishing  of love and I have seen great love stories floundering on the rocks .I have seen lovers being punished for loving and love being harassed and humiliated , but I refuse to give up my faith in love .....

I have never been able to understand how love happens . Can you imagine , two unkown people ,a man and a woman meet and then continue to meet till they find it extremely difficult to live without one another . That is I think the beginning and the birth of love . But , not all love stories have a happy ending .I have been a witness to the love story of two of the most talented actors of our time .I will not give any one a  chance to take a guess because I am sure that anyone who knows anything about the film industry will know about the love story of Amitabh and Rekha.....

Both Amitabh and Rekha came to Bombay around the same time , in the late sixties . They had to face almost the same kind of struggle before they could make it . Amitabh had several flops to his name before he could hit it out big with

"Zanjeer "and then never looked back . Rekha made a very shaky start till she touched the sky of success with "Saawan Bhaadon ", which was a film directed by  the veteran filmmaker Mohan Segal , who incidentally had refused to even do an audition with Amitabh .

Amitabh and Rekha first came together in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's "Namak Haram  "and people called Rekha "an ugly black duckling "and "a Kaali bhains "and Amitabh was described as "a rare man whose legs started from his neck "

Amitabh and Rekha had to wait for a long time to be cast as the lead pair and they found the opportunity to work together in a sensitive film like "Do Anjaane" and the first sparks of love were already  flying all over . They did come other films like "Aalaap " ,  "Ganga ki Saugandh "and by the time they did "Mr.Natwarlal ", they were so very madly in love that their love could be seen in their eyes and their body language .

The song "o  pardeshiya ye sach hai piya log kehate hai maine tujhko dil de diya "was one of the best and most romantic poems written in honour of true love . They were next seen in films like "Ram Balram ", " Suhag"and "Imaan Dharam ", but it was Yash Chopra the Ambassador of love who made them shine out as lovers in  what is considered to be one of the most controversial films as Yash had touched the real life story of Amitabh , Rekha and Jaya Bachchan .

Once more , it could be seen so very clearly how Amitabh and Rekha were madly in love and their love could best be felt and understood in the song ,"ye kaha aa gaye hum "which ends with Amitabh saying , "aao aaj hum duniya ko bata de ki humko mohbbat hai mohabbat hai mohabbat hai ".

I have seen other great lovers telling stories about their real life love , like Dilip Kumar and Madhubala whose love scenes in "Taraana "and "Mughal -e-Azam "can never be forgotten , Raj Kapoor and Nargis whose every movement and the look in their eyes danced to the ecstacy of love and who can forget the love scene between Dharmendra and Hema Malini who did eighteen films together during which time they fell in love , got married and even had two daughters . It must be said here that except for Dilip Kumar , all the other heros , including Amitabh Bachchan where married man with family when they had their love stories with their heroine .

It was not an easy path to walk for Amitabh and Rekha.Jaya tried all that she could do to bring the affair of her husband to an end and sometimes even publicly or privately humiliated Rekha , but the lovers continued to be in love till "Silsila"was released and had created a stir all over .

They somehow did not work together again , but I can vouch that they are still in love . Rekha once took me to Udaipur only to tell me how she would not give up loving "Him"(she has rarely called Amitabh as his name and it is always "Him"or "God"when she talk about him.When Amitabh started ABCL , he had his office in the Ajanta Hotel in Juhu where Rekha used to once live when she was new to Bombay . What a beautiful and meaningful coincidence !

It is almost thirty years since they are said to have broken off , but there is not a day when Rekha doesn't think about him or talk about him .He makes it a point to ask organisers of award functions and other events to make sure that she is given a seat in the same row as Amitabh or some place from where she have a look at him . To this day she wears a sindoor in the parting of her hair and loses no opportunity to show of her sindoor and the mystery of the sindoor keeps glowing .

These days Rekha is into singing the Ghazals of renowned singers , which talk about undying love . She will soon be a part of a TV serial for the first time . The show is titled "Gum Hai Kisi Ke Pyaar Mein "in which the song talks about how love becomes " ibaadat" (worship) when love crosses all boundaries and barriers and becomes an intrinsic and intense part of the lover of the beloved .

I don't know whether Amitabh is still in love with Rekha , but I can sure that Rekha is still very much in love with him and I don't think this love can ever grow old , die or become a memory of the past .