Popular gossip columnist of the 1960s and 70s, Devyani Chaubal had coined the term ‘Superstar’ for the phenomenon called Rajesh Khanna. In his biography on Khanna, Gautam Chintamani has attempted to explore the hysteria around him.
Chintamani, who was here to speak on 'Biographies: Are they literature or PR?' at the Odisha Literary Festival, speaks to City Express about his extensively researched book, Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna. Excerpts:
BM: Why did you choose writing about Rajesh Khanna?
GC: Writers have this misconception that they choose their books. However, I think somewhere the books choose their writers. Writing about Rajesh Khanna allowed me to look at Hindi cinema in a new light. Popular Hindi cinema has been written in a varied degree, but certain facets about what happens beyond the stardom remained unexplored. When you look at Rajesh Khanna, you visualise those four years between 1969 and 1973 when he had given 17 hits in row.
He had 30 to 35 years-long career and faced many ups and downs. The way he came to films, the impact he had on popular cinema, redefined the yardstick of superstardom, which is used even today. Even if Salman becomes popular, his father Salim Khan Sahab would never consider his popularity to be at par with Rajesh Khanna’s. Though RK came into the scene after the troika of Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar, he never tried to emulate any of the three but still kept their nostalgia alive in audience’s mind. Rajesh Khanna for me is a singular identity who took a little bit from his past, re-interpreted it and opened new a arena for Hindi cinema.
BM: Share some special anecdotes from the life of Rajesh Khanna?
GC: The best anecdote I came across was, once Rajesh Khanna was shooting for a film near Mithibai College in the then Bombay. A fakir was singing and asking for alms. Looking at the popularity of Rajesh Khanna at that time, the fakir instead of singing ‘Bhagwan/Allah ke naam pe de de’, started singing, ‘Rajesh Khanna ke naam pe de de.’ It just shows how big Rajesh Khanna was at that point of time. He was a phenomenon and there was a saying at that time -‘Upar Aaka aur Niche Kaka.’ Women used to write letters to him in blood accompanying a doctor’s certificate which would authenticate that it was blood actually.
BM: Amitabh Bachchan with his baritone and height, seemed a hero material from the start. What was it about Rajesh Khanna which made people go into a frenzy for him?
GC: In case of Rajesh Khanna, it was a coming together of many factors. Rajesh Khanna came into limelight in 1966, when he won a talent hunt by outdoing almost 10,000 contestants. So there was a certain sense of branding that Rajesh Khanna had enjoyed even before he had become an actor. Akin to his flamboyant image on screen, he never shied away from the same image off-screen with his numerous affairs from Anju Mahendru to Tina Munim to Mumtaaz.
The biggest hit that which launched his career was Aradhna. In the film there is a scene where the hero and the heroine consummate their love. The next morning, when the actress Sharmila Tagore is guilty of what had happened. Rajesh Khanna who consoles Sharmila and says that he would approach her parents for marriage. Ideally a hero of that era would have avoided such a scene. Similarly, in Do Raaste there is a scene where Rajesh Khanna slaps the heroine for being unreasonable. So here was an actor who actually portrayed characters which were closer to reality. People connected with him because of this factor.
In Anand and Safar he gave songs like, Zindagi Kaisi hai Paheli Hai and Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana, which symbolised positivity and a zeal for life which made him more popular. Before the advent of parallel cinema, Rajesh Khanna’s characters were like a breath of fresh air for the middle class. Most of his films were heroine oriented films...he never took the heroine’s glory away.
Bachchan Sahab’s case was different He was such a formidable actor, he became a one-man industry. There was no one who could stand before him so the women’s character went for a toss in the 80s.
BM: How many years of research did it take to write the book?
GC: I used to write columns for newspapers and when Rajesh Khanna was ill and unfortunately he died, I wrote a few articles. I was writing my book on Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak when my publisher and Editor at Harper Collins came up with the idea to explore Rajesh Khanna. I started writing in 2012. Researching and writing took about a year and a half and editing took about six more months. So the whole time period was about two years and three months.
BM: When was the first time you saw a Rajesh Khanna film?
GC: As my mother was a huge admirer of Rajesh Khanna, I was introduced to the superstar from my childhood. My grandfather was a Telugu scriptwriter, who wrote a script for a Rajesh Khanna film the Train, which was originally made in Telugu. My earliest memory of a Rajesh Khanna film was Amar Prem. My favourites, however, are Dushman and Aap Ki Kasam.
BM: Tell us about your upcoming projects?
GC: I am currently working on a book which delves into screen writing in the 1980s. I will be looking at writers of the 80s which is considered as one of the worst phase of popular Hindi cinema, but I differ on that account. In my book on Qayamat Se Qayamat Se Tak, I write a little on early 80s which was a rare period in Hindi cinema where three-four generations of film-makers were working simultaneously like Salim Khan, Javed Akhtar, Kadar Khan, Prayag Raj, Satish Bhatnagar and Sachin Bhowmik.