The Mystery Woman Rekha Also Faced Sexual Harassment But She Is Still Silent!  

The way Rekha Ganesan has metamorphosed during the last forty years can defy any one who doesn’t believe in miracles. She once told me that she

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By Team Bollyy
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The Mystery Woman Rekha Also Faced Sexual Harassment But She Is Still Silent!  

The way Rekha Ganesan has metamorphosed during the last forty years can defy any one who doesn’t believe in miracles. She once told me that she was “god’s chosen one” and what she has been doing is nothing but proving that she is indeed the favorite of god. I have like in many other cases seen the rise and rise of Rekha who is a senior citizen now and was a Member of Parliament where she was more of a decoration piece and many in the country wondered why a glamorous  actress like her was doing in the Rajya Sabha where she proved to be more of a distraction than a woman who had ideas for a new India or even to change the face of the Indian woman. It is strange that the beautiful woman hardly attended any of the sessions in the upper house and had not participated in any debate and had not asked a single question, but she like many other parliamentarians enjoyed all the benefits of being a M.P. including a posh bungalow with a government staff. She had come a very long way and I have been a part of that way as the following anecdotes will show you…..

  • I was still in college and a very crazy fan of Hindi films who could go to any extents to see a film every Friday and even on other days. I also kept track of all the stars of the days gone by and the new faces who came to Bombay to make it big.
  • It was in the late sixties that a sixteen year old girl from Chennai, Rekha Ganesan who was the daughter of the Adonis of the south, Gemini Ganesan and his actress –wife Pushpavalli. She had done two films in Tamil when she was just thirteen but her mother who had dreams for her sent her to Bombay to try her luck in Hindi films.
  • She was being taken care of by her brother, Babuji who was also a music director who couldn’t make it in Bombay. She got her first break in “Anjana Safar” and started off with a controversy when the hero of the film Biswajeet forcibly tried to kiss her while a song was being picturized on them. She didn’t complain because Biswajeet was a hero and no heroine who was interested in building a future for herself could take on the wrath of any hero, big or small.
  • She was asked to take up a room in the Ajanta Hotel in Juhu where she met all her prospective producers, especially after her first big film , “Saawan Bhado” with Navin Nichol turned out to be a very big hit.
  • She was not the typical beautiful heroine of Hindi films. She was dark, plump and filmmakers and the media of the time invented new titles for her like “The ugly black duckling”, “the ugly young woman with no future” and “ the Kaali Bhains”, but work kept coming to her with directors like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Randhir Kapoor, Anand Sagar and others offering her work because they felt she was “very sexy”. Actors refused to work with her, but she soon made a success story of herself.
  • She now moved into an apartment of her own in Beach Apartments, also in Juhu where she had neighbours like Jaya Bhaduri, Asrani, Shekhar Kapur  and the well-known writer Inder Raj Anand who lived with his sons, Tinnu Anand and Bittu Anand. It was here that Rekha first set her eyes on an almost unknown actor called Amitabh Bachchan who used to visit Jaya and little did Rekha know what a role Amitabh was to play in her career and her life.
  • Rekha soon became a controversial figure with the gossip magazines filling up pages about her romantic liaisons with young actors like Kin Kin (Kiran Kumar ), Vin Vin(Vinod Mehra) who is also said to have married her.
  • She was now a star who was working in several big films with Amitabh Bachchan (they did ten films together), Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra , Jeetendra and every big hero of the times who felt it was a privilege to work with her.
  • Her doing the maximum films with Amitabh led all the gossip magazines and the industry to spread wild stories about them and the stories continued till Yash Chopra created a casting coup when he brought together Amitabh Bachchan, Rekha and Jaya Bachchan who staged a comeback and the stories about the great romantic affair continued.
  • In the time between her struggle and becoming a star, she was supposed to have consumed poison with the upma she had for breakfast, but survived. In a desperate move she got married to a young businessman from Delhi, Mukesh Agrawal who in a mysterious way committed suicide days after their marriage.
  • It was a little before all this could happen that I had a bad experience with her. She was shooting at Seth Studios, the only air conditioned studio in Bombay (now defunct). I was on a drinking spree during those days and I walked into the studio. I had never met her face to face before. The manager, Mr. Vishwanath was the studio Manager and he was the studio manager of Guru Dutt Studios. He was a very good friend and he knew my condition. I asked him if I could go on the floor and he said, “ Rekha Madam is shooting inside” I decided to make it a do or die situation and walked in. She did not say a word, but by the time I reached office she had told my editor of my going to her set in an inebriated state. My editor too didn’t say anything to me and I thought I had been saved, but…
  • A day after Mukesh Agrawal’s death, Rekha was in Udaipur in Rajasthan to shoot for K.C Bokadia’s “Phool Bane Angaare” with Rajnikanth, Prem Chopra and a massive crowd. Bokadia had made arrangements for the media from Bombay to fly to Udaipur. I had no idea that I would also be in the list of guests but my editor backed out at the last minute and asked me to go to Udaipur. I tried my best to avoid the trip when I knew that Rekha was there, but my editor insisted that I go and I finally took the flight thinking that I  was going to be made a bali ka bakra. We reached the hotel at around 8:30 pm and Bokadia arranged a small party for us, but I had given up drinking those days and was waiting to be hanged. Madam Rekha came down the wooden stairs of the hotel which was a palace once.  She was carrying a poodle in her arms and she had one look at all the members of the media and asked, “has Ali come?” I knew my time had come , but  she postponed my hanging for a night when she asked Bokadia to shift me to a suite next to hers and looking at me, said” you will come to my suite at 6:30 in the morning”. I didn’t know how many hours it took for the morning to dawn and I was sitting with her and she didn’t mention the last incident and started talking and our talk continued for the next four days as she narrated the story of her life. I came back to Bombay, a new man and wrote out the piece on her.  I met her a day after it was published and she said , “what are you doing in this profession? You should have been sitting in the hills and writing poetry or writing books on philosophy or religion. You can still do it, think about my suggestion”.
  • That was the beginning of a beautiful association between the miracle woman and me. She asked me about my family, especially about my daughter, Swati. She kept asking me not to drink again. She told me about how she never used artificial make- up and how she grew her own medicines for every occasion in her garden at Sea Springs at Band Stand next to Honey Irani’s bungalow which Javed Akhtar had bought when they were married and behind Shah Rukh Khan’s Mannat”.
  • And if there was one question she asked me every time I met her, it was ,”did you see HIM, how is he, tell him not to work so hard because it is not good for him in the long run” . I was supposed to know who the HIM she was referring to was.
  • I met her three months ago at a special screening of “Dear Maya” organized by Manisha Koirala who was making a comeback after her battle with cancer. I sat in a corner thinking that Madam Rekha would neglect me, but I was moved when she came running to me as soon as she saw me. I was surprised at her all white sari and dark glasses at night and the spring in her feet and she had just turned 62.
  • The mystery of Madam Rekha continues and I don’t think she will give any one a chance to know the mystery behind her being Rekha who will be remembered for things known and unknown, like I can never understand how Rekha Ganesan who hardly knew any English can now speak the language like even the greatest scholar of English can never dream of talking..

Being in love can drive the lover insane?

 I saw Madam Rekha at her eloquent best talking about her association with Amitabh Bachchan to the same Simi Garewal. To say that she was looking gorgeous even after she had crossed sixty is only a waste of words.

Talking about Amitabh she said she could never understand how all the best human qualities could be found in one man like Amitabh

She talked about Amitabh’s influence on her and said that there are people who come and go out of one’s life, but it is for you to meet the right person and learn everything good in him to make your life better and that was what she was fortunate to find in Amitabh.

The two had done ten films together and Simi said it was quite a long time and hadn’t she fallen in love with him. Rekha being the not so foolish person as she claimed, said “ in all these years I have never seen any man, woman or child who has not been completely, passionately, insanely, desperately and even hopelessly in love with him”.

The Interview gets very interesting when she almost contradicts herself when on the one side she says that there was nothing personal between   them and within seconds she claims that she is absolutely in love with him.

She ends the talk about “the most controversial affair of the century by saying, “there is mother’s love, sister’s love and fan’s love, but you take all that love together and add some more and that is the feeling I have for him.

When asked why she didn’t come out in the open and deny all the controversies and gossip about them, she says, “ it was not worth it “.

At the end of this part of the interview, I could see Simi Garewal looking exasperated and puzzled. With the mysterious Madam Rekha anyone could be in the same situation and bang their hands on their lap.

At the end and after more than thirty years, the story  remains as mysterious as the miraculous and mysterious Madam Rekha

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