Superstar who turned romance, and even death, into high art
Ziya us Salam
A rose, a candle, a couplet. Rajesh Khanna, Hindi
cinema’s first real superstar who passed away in Mumbai following a
prolonged illness on Wednesday, used these props freely and easily to
capture for the first time in Indian cinema a romance that was both
adult and modern.
He was made less by the characters
he played or the lines penned by dialogue writers than his idiosyncratic
mannerisms — the drawls, the pauses, the sudden sparkle in his eyes,
the fresh and easy smile, and the playful tilt of the head. Even when
stricken with cancer, or lymphosarcoma of the intestine — as Anand, a
character he played in the film of the same name, was — that tilt and
smile barely faltered.
To understand what Rajesh
Khanna was or how he altered the persona of the film hero, it is
important to stress what he was not. He was not a loveable tramp like
Raj Kapoor, nor a tragedy king like Dilip Kumar. He did not trade on his
masculinity like Dharmendra and rarely, if ever, played the hero with
shades of grey as Dev Anand liked to do. He was the stuff of soft
romance, his characters often earnest and virtuous, his performances
enhanced by a face that was a fortune and a style of acting that used
eyes, lips, hands, and vocal chords to great effect.
Women,
who were driven to distraction by his carefree and non-threatening
charm, swooned over him in droves. As Sharmila Tagore, his co-star in
many films, observed, the hysteria around his stardom reached feverish
pitches with women marrying his photographs and pulling at his clothes.
In the mid-Seventies, three women slit their wrists during the screening
of
Aap ki Kasam
in an old Delhi cinema hall.
He got his break in cinema in Chetan Anand’s
Aakhri Khat
in 1966 as a result of
winning a talent competition.
This was followed by Ravindra Dave’s
Raaz
, opposite Babita, which he regarded as his first major break. But it
was only a couple of years later, when he made bold to play almost
second fiddle to Sharmila Tagore in Shakti Samanta’s
Aradhana
, that a star was born. Despite being a heroine-oriented film, the mix
of S.D. Burman’s mesmerising music and Kishore Kumar’s voice brought
Rajesh Khanna into his own. The song
“Mere sapno ki rani”
became a youth anthem of the 1960s and is still remembered for its
memorable train sequence. Ironically it was entirely canned with Rajesh
Khanna shot in a jeep in Darjeeling and Sharmila Tagore, pictured in a
train, filmed in Bombay’s Nataraj studio.
The two would go on to forge a successful partnership in other films such as
Safar
and
Amar Prem
. He also had a fine run with Mumtaz, doing eight films with her, and in
the bargain helping her graduate from a B-grade movie actress to the
top league.
Undisputed ascent
Affectionately called Kaka, he charmed and yodelled his way through a series of films such as
Do Raaste
,
Roti
,
Kati Patang
,
Bawarchi
and
Anand
. His success was all the more remarkable as it came at a time when the
industry was still singing hosannas to the peerless Raj Kapoor, Dilip
Kumar and Dev Anand. But with a record 15 consecutive superhits, there
was no questioning his quick and undisputed ascent to superstardom.
In truth, he must owe at least a small portion of his success to Kishore Kumar’s songs such as
“Mere sapno ki rani,”
“Roop tera mastana”
and
“Karvate badalte rahe saari raat hum.”
After the success of
Haathi Mere Saathi
, Salim-Javed who had penned the film, offered to refashion Khanna’s
image as an Angry Young Man. He declined. And his loss was Amitabh
Bachchan’s gain.
Khanna’s decline came as rapidly as
his rise. After a decade of ruling the box office, his position was
usurped by Bachchan, who had acted with him in
Anand
. Rajesh Khanna was not getting any younger and the cinema fans of the
1980s and 1990s seemed ready for a more volatile and rebellious hero.
After attempts to romance the much younger Jayaprada and Sridevi in
Awaaz
and
Masterji
flopped miserably, he took on a semi-comic role in
Maqsad
, almost as a legitimate way to make fun of himself. He tried to stay in the hunt with multi-starrers, but with the exception of
Avtar
, a weepy saga remembered more for its bhajan
“Chalo bulava aaya hai,”
success eluded him.
His personal life, which included
a broken marriage with Dimple Kapadia, was chequered. It was only
somewhat recently that he did his first commercial, a television
advertisement for a fan manufacturer. With the popular song
“Yeh Shaam Mastani”
in the background and an old, almost infirm Rajesh Khanna in the foreground, it was an attempt to evoke nostalgia.
Rajesh Khanna, actor, died in Mumbai on July 18, 2012, aged 69. He
was born on December 29, 1942. He is survived by two daughters, Twinkle
and Rinke.