Rajesh Khanna - Superstar of the 1960s

Rajesh Khanna - 1960 & 1970s Superstar

Rajesh Khanna was the Indian superstar who had more girls swooning through much of the 1960s and early 1970s, than perhaps even Gregory Peck could manage in all his life.

From Cairo to Tashkent to Karachi to Hong Kong – `Kaka’ as he was called in Bollywood, had women in raptures over his boyish ,pimpled looks and men copying his hairstyle, his way of tilting his head to one side, his slow, intense speechmaking and his cheeky one-liners  like `Main marne se pehle marna nahi chahta hoon’ (I don’t want to die, before I actually die).

I was surprised to see Pakistan’s best selling Dawn running a contest for readers to remember their favourite Rajesh Khanna movies, songs and moments as a tribute to the man who wowed audiences  from the neighbouring nation which fought three wars with India. In some senses, it was a larger tribute for the Indian superstar, than the accolades, Indian newspapers ran for Khanna as first page leads from Chennai’s conservative Hindu to Mumbai’s Times of India.  

Khanna, born in 1942 in the Sikh Holy city of Amritsar, burst on to Bollywood screens in the 1960s – the decade when the whole of Asia was in turmoil. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were war zones. India, Egypt, Pakistan faced student movements, protests, high prices and unemployment. Violent Communist movements were threatening large parts of the sub-continent. Flower children from the West were making their way with backpacks and their anti-war messages through Asia.  

Movie goers wanted to forget their everyday life – the hardships, the bitterness and for some, the `troubles’ which often meant family members missing or dead in one of the many movements that sprung up through that era. Khanna with co-stars like the pretty Mumtaz or the dazzling Sharmila Tagore, were the drug which allowed them a three-hour escape from harsh reality.  

Movie after movie, with Khanna in the lead, became a box office hit – Aradhana (Worship), Kati Patang (Kite without a string), Haathi Mera Saathi (My Elephant Comrade) , Safar (Journey), Amar Prem (Eternal Love), Bawarchi (The Chef), Dushman (The Enemy), Anand (Happiness) – to name but a few.  People thronged cinema halls to watch this short, slim young man deliver his dialogues, smile his droopy smile and woo his ladies in unashamed tear jerker, romantic cinema. In Aradhana, Khanna plays a rakishly handsome Air Force pilot who dies in a crash, in Amar Prem a man who falls in love witha prostitute, in Haathi Mera Saathi, a rich elephant trainer fallen on bad days and in Dushman, a truck driver who accidentally kills someone whose job as the sole bread winner in a farming household he has to perform against a suspended jail term  . The roles and story plots kept changing but all of them involved a boy-meets-girl romance - evoking an era of innocence, of gentle manners and one where Good triumphs over Bad.

 R.D.Burman with Kishore Kumar on a CD cover

The voice of Kishore Kumar, an untrained singer from Madhya Pradesh of Bengali parents, who is arguably Bollywood’s biggest singing sensation till date, helped sell his films with numbers like - Zindagi Ka Safar, Kora Kagaz Tha Ye Man Mera, Accha Tho Hum Chalte Hain, Chala Jaataa Hoon, Chingari Koi Bhadke - which had audiences, many of whom  hardly understood Hindi, jiving  . Much of the musical score for these movies was the handiwork of R.D.Burman, a scion of the royal family which used to rule the tiny state of Tripura, bordering Bangladesh, before it joined the Indian union.

Khanna with his co-actress Mumtaz in the film Aap ki Kasam

There were rumours of Khanna’s flings with co-stars which only went to feed the frenzy of his following among his female followers. Mumtaz or `Mumu’ as Indian cine-goer’s used to call her, was one of the first heart-throbs linked romantically with him by celebrity magazines. After Mumtaz went off to marry an Overseas Indian business tycoon (some say unhappy with Khanna never proposing to her),  he dazzled the media with an off-screen romance with Anju Mahendru, another starlet. Tina Ambani, wife of India’s second richest industrialist, was another actress who hit the headlines as his co-actor in gossip coloumns. Eventually, Khanna married Dimple Kapadia, a Bollywood actress, 14 years his junior, breaking many a heart across the Asian continent. News reports from that time have it that many co-eds slashed their wrists to protest his marriage!

In 1971, Hrishikesh Mukherjee made a movie – Anand (Happiness) – about a cancer patient waiting to die, living life to the full. Khanna played the role of the hero, the cancer patient. The Socialist  doctor, who befriended him and with whom he lived his last days with was an as yet unknown Bollywood actor, Amitabh Bachchan.  

Many said Bachchan with his short but fiery role as the stern doctor who loved his fun-loving cancer patient , overshadowed Khanna.  Two years later, Mukherjee again cast the two together in another blockbuster – Namak Haram (Traitor) where Khanna played a labour leader planted by his rich tycoon friend (Bachchan) to subvert the labour movement in his mill, but one who eventually starts sympathising with his co-workers - but by then the lover boy was losing his edge and Bachchan, dubbed the `Angry Young Man’ for his many strong roles in anti-establishment movies was gaining ground in the popularity sweepstakes.

Bachchan with Khanna in the movie Namak Haram

Audiences  had started tiring of romances. They wanted something more than opiate – perhaps they sought to protest against the system which was ruining their countries – the nexus between corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and mafia – and Bachchan gave them just that with his Hero and anti-Hero roles in new blockbusters like Zanzeer (Chain)  and Deewar (The Wall).

Khanna, the ageing romatic superstar faded out slowly fighting till the very end with movie after movie, some of which clicked, some of which he himself would have liked to forget. But his audiences across Asia still remained enthralled with his older hits and his dialogues - - ` Zindagi aur maut uparwale ke haath hai. Usse na aap badal sakte hain na main’(Life and death are in the hands of our maker, Neither you, nor I can change that).