Widely called the first superstar of India, Rajesh Khanna emerged like a tidal wave which towered above everything else in Bollywood, for a three-year period.
From 1969 to 1972, he had not one, not two, not even 10, but as many as 15 mega hits to his credit. And then, the tidal wave dissipated in as dramatic a manner as it once had dizzying heights.
His story is reminiscent of the case of Pakistan’s first superstar Waheed Murad, who too had a rise and fall that has no parallel in the cinema of our part of the subcontinent.
Rajesh Khanna took to the bottle and ultimately died of liver cancer. He thought he remained a superstar till the end. Waheed Murad is also reported to have sought refuge in an ‘external source’. The concluding line in the obituary that I wrote for the December 1983 issue of the monthly Herald was: ‘Waheed did not die of a heart attack, he died of a broken heart’.
Back to the Indian superstar, the Delhi-based Yasser Usman has authored a real page-turner, Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India’s First Superstar. The book reads like a novel, such is the writer’s narrative skill. But more importantly, it is rich in content.
Usman spoke to a large number of people who had known Kaka (as Khanna was fondly called) and delved deep into old newspapers and magazines, quoting them profusely. The paperback is also enriched with some rare photographs.
In the first ever Filmfare-United Producers’ Talent Hunt, Kaka was the panel of judges’ first choice. Strangely enough, the following year, the lanky young man, who answered to the name of Amitabh Bachchan, was rejected by the same panel.
Amitabh started his career with inconsequential films but made it big when he appeared as ‘an angry young man’ in Zanjeer, a movie scripted (and the character created) by writers Salim-Javed, who had earlier written the story, screenplay and dialogue for at least two of Kaka’s major chart busters.
Khanna starred with Bachchan in a couple of films and the two shared stellar honours in equal measure.
Writing about Khanna’s performance in one of the movies (I can’t recall which), the reviewer of weekly Screen opined that his performance ranked with the best of Dilip Kumar’s.
