When Khan replied it depended on the role, it did not go down well with Khanna. He demanded to know if Sanjeev Kumar was better than him. Salim Khan recalls how, after he had given an interview hailing Sanjeev Kumar as one of the brightest actors, Kaka summoned him to the Mehboob Studios and quizzed him on that interview. Most of all, his insecurities hurt Rajesh Khanna he constantly sought positive reinforcement from people around him. The book walks us through Khanna’s high handedness, complexities and totally opposing facets of his personality, some of which led to his downfall from the high perch his fans had put him onto. “Unlike Khanna whose stardom fuelled his persona, Bachchan’s aura fanned his stardom,” writes Chintamani. And finally the Angry Young Man of Indian cinema pulled the rug from under the feet of the superstar. And Khanna’s fall had started.īachchan’s off-screen persona was so overpowering that anything he did was acceptable. A wrong choice as Bachchan who played Vicky walked away with all the acclaim when the film was released. In Namak Haram, another super hit, Rajesh Khanna was originally offered the role of the spoilt rich kid Vicky, but he chose the role of Somu, the poor worker who dies in the end. “He believed he was the reason why his films did well and never really appreciated the people who worked with him.” Zanjeer came in 1973 and despite being made by Khanna, the Salim-Javed duo never thought of casting him, and this, says writer Salim Khan, was due to Khanna’s attitude. He did just that, and the actor who was written off before this film became the talk of the town.Īctually, says the author, Bachchan was so insignificant before Anand, that Khanna had not even bothered to find out anything about his co-star, and snubbed him often. It was the legendary comedian Mehmood who advised Bachchan to make the most of Khanna’s death scene. But it also brought him face-to-face with Amitabh Bachchan, the Bengali doctor who treats him. It bestowed upon him his greatest and most enduring on-screen character. As Chintamani puts it, “Anand gave Khanna much more than mere commercial success or critical acclaim. Sippy that cast Khanna in the title role - that of a cancer-afflicted dying hero.
In 1972 came a low-budget movie called Anand, produced by N.C. It was really his female fan following that made Khanna a superstar star-struck young women mobbing him, leaving kiss marks on his car, sending him letters written in blood, and heartbroken when he married Dimple Kapadia.
Burman’s music for Kati Patang and Kishore Kumar’s soul stirring evergreen songs, combined with Rajesh Khanna’s inimitable manner of delivering them - Yeh jo mohabbat hei Yeh shaam mastani, and Pyar deewana hota hei - catapulted Rajesh Khanna into the “phenomenon” mode.
Apparently during the shoots, Asha Parekh, an established star, stayed in a far superior hotel than the one given to him!īut Aradhana’s success changed all that. Interestingly, even while Aradhana was being made, Rajesh Khanna was acting with Asha Parekh in Kati Patang, where he was constantly “whining” about his being stuck in movies with women-centric subjects. Now Gautam Chintamani, in his book Dark Star: The Loneliness of being Rajesh Khanna (HarperCollins Publishers India), tells us how the first superstar of Hindi Cinema even contemplated suicide at one time in the early 1970s, but refrained from doing so as he didn’t want the world to remember Rajesh Khanna thus.īorn Jatin Khanna in 1942 into a family of railways contractors who had moved from Lahore to Bombay a few years before his birth, and adopted by his childless uncle Chunni Lal who spoilt him thoroughly, Jatin became Rajesh Khanna after winning the Filmfare-United Producers Combine talent hunt in 1965, when he was a theatre artist.Īfter a few films in the mid-60s, his real break came with Shakti Samantha’s Aradhana (1969) which left the entire Hindi film industry shell shocked at its phenomenal success. Marilyn Monroe’s suicide is the stuff of legend the stunning diva Madhubala - Bollywood is arguably yet to find a more beautiful actress - was deeply unhappy, trapped in a wrong marriage after her father played villain and prevented her marriage to her heartthrob Dilip Kumar. Yet another book has been published to tell us about the loneliness and dark patches of gloom that inhabit the world of most celebrities. Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India.
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