Wednesday, Jul 18, 2012
Once upon a
time, there was a Rajesh
Khanna. Men aped him.
Women worshipped him.
And girls married his
photographs, smudged his car with lipsticks and
waited late night outside
hotels hoping to catch a
glimpse of him. Once when
he had fever, a group of
college students spent hours taking turns to put ice
water on his forehead in a
photograph. In the history of Hindi
cinema, nobody has induced fan hysteria like Rajesh Khanna. And
nobody has captured the nation's
collective mindspace like the actor, who
passed away at Ashirwad, his iconic
Mumbai residence, on Wednesday. He was
69. The cause of his death has not been officially announced. But doctors treating
him at Lilavati hospital hinted at cancer. Once he rode into a nation's heart
serenading Sharmila Tagore with Mere
sapnon ki raani in Aradhana (1969) and
followed it up with another blockbuster
Do Raaste a few weeks later, Rajesh
Khanna rewrote box-office history. Between the years 1969 and 1972 almost
everything he touched turned to gold - 15
consecutive hits of various degrees. No
wonder producers chanted: Upar aaka,
neeche Kaka (God above and Kaka,
Khanna's pet name, below). Nobody really knows how an actor of
average build, middling height and a face
often sprayed with pimples hypnotized
India. May be, he was the last gasp of
innocence when India was getting angry
about unemployment and price rise, a hyphen between the simplicity of the
years gone by and the uncertainty of the
future. May be, it was just written. Unable
to find a phrase that captured the
phenomenon, the industry finally coined a
new term: the superstar. He behaved like a superstar too. BBC
journalist Jack Pizzey described him as
someone with the charisma of Rudolph
Valentino and the arrogance of Napoleon.
The star had missed his interview
appointment five times. The Amritsar-born actor was too big and
too swept away by fame to care. Who
wouldn't when even street fashion was
defined by your personality? The belt
slapped over shirt, the round-collared
guru kurta, a smart ploy to hide a growing waistline, all became a rage. And even in
those no-sat-TV days, his smile sold
toothpaste (Macleans). He was the king of romance; most at
home shaking his head and crooning love
nothings. Songs were the spine of his
movies; he revived Kishore Kumar's
singing career in Aradhana. But the actor
brought no revolution to the art of celluloid love; he just gently blended the
playfulness of Dev Anand with a fraction
of Dilip Kumar's intensity; to this he
added his own charm and style. Critics loved him too for doing off-beat
movies such as Ittefaq and Aavishkar. But
the actor knew how to wet a
handkerchief too. Few actors have milked
tear ducts better than him and fewer
have profited more from a broken heart. It is easy to empathize with the smiling
cancer patient in Anand or the large-
hearted bhadrolok in Amar Prem. There is
a style with which he says: "Pushpa, I hate
tears." Rajesh's acting was defined by
style. But in his later years, the style degenerated into a bundle of
mannerisms. Like Dev Anand, Rajesh
Khanna too became his own parody. Once the action films' angry young man
came with Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh
Khanna's romantic movies (typified by
Shakti Samanta films) went out of
fashion. A sudden marriage to Dimple
Kapadia, almost half his age, got him back in focus. But his attitude issues as an
actor - coming late for shooting on sets,
ego clashes with other stars - ensured
that he lost big banners and good
directors once the chips were down. After
Mehbooba (1975) flopped, his superstar days were over. But just when critics wrote him off, the
actor made a comeback of sorts with
Amardeep (1979). Right through the
1980s, he blended the occasional hit
(Souten, Maqsad) with the rare
blockbuster (Avtaar) and a stream of flops. Joining the Congress in 1991 was a
shrewd career move. The same year he
contested the Lok Sabha election against
BJP leader L K Advani, then on Cloud 9
following his Ayodhya rath yatra, and
gave him the fright of his life. The actor lost by only 1,589 votes from the New
Delhi Lok Sabha constituency. A few
months later, he comfortably won the
byelection beating fellow actor
Shatrughan Sinha. But in politics, the
actor sparkled like a shooting star only to vanish with the same speed. The last two decades were disappointing
for the ex-superstar. In 1997, he played a
father in RK Productions' Aa Ab Laut
Chalein. He also acted in forgettable
television serials such as Ittefaq. When an
ex-superstar ends up rubbing sun cream on the back of the likes of Laila Khan as
he did in Wafaa (2008), you know he isn't
doing too well. But then as the superstar
might have said, Hum to sab rangmanch
ki kathputliyan hain... And for his fans,
Rajesh Khanna will always be the only and forever superstar.
