But let me just quantify things for the sake of better understanding. Think of Bachchan’s best years (1975-84), and add to that the combined stardom of the three Khans throughout 90s and 2000s. Now add Hrithik’s Kaho Na Pyar Hai hysteria and Kumar Gaurav’s forgotten but equally mad Love Story days. Whatever unseen volume of salivating fan clout you can fathom, multiply that with 2 raised to power 15. Yes… 32768 multiplied by that imaginary load of maniacal fad is what Rajesh Khanna at his freaking peak was like. He was, definitely, God. I say this because Khanna delivered an unbelievable streak of 15 consecutive solo superhits. That’s right. 15. Consecutive. Solo. Super hits. That’s an unbroken record of gargantuan proportions.
The legendary star passed away on 18th July, two days before The Dark Knight rose. To capture the true essence of Kaka’s reign at the top, and facets of his onscreen avatars that go beyond the veneer of a superstar, I have made an effort to pick and choose ten films from his reign at the top. These may not be his best or most memorable films, but they play a visceral part in making him what he was, understanding his unprecedented phenomenon and analyzing how future generations will both judge and savor him.
Aradhana (1969)
If you watch Aradhana now, chances are you’ll not be exactly floored by its young, cougar-desired, fair looking, and genuinely handsome leading man. But back then, the moment the mustachioed Rajesh Khanna (son of the deceased, similar looking but clean shaven dad) in a pilot uniform, gets off the plane in the second half and waves at the screen, he had inadvertently entered the hearts and minds of millions. And that was it. Rajesh Khanna was an accredited superstar by the end of film.
People give a lot of credit to Kishore Kumar’s songs and how his peppy voice provided an impeccable match to Khanna’s lover boy persona. But they forget that while Rajesh Khanna’s success owes a lot to Kishore’s songs, it was Aradhana that resurrected the latter’s singing career and catapulted him to the top of background singing scene. Mohd. Rafi could never recover the numero uno position after Aradhana. He was always the second fiddle from then on.
Ittefaq (1969)
In an era where songs ruled the roost in Bollywood, Yash Chopra came out with this taut, song-less Hitchcockian murder mystery, set inside a house and taking place all in one night. Ittefaq remains one of the most defining films of its genre but is unfortunately forgotten under the overpowering romantic undertone of Khanna’s other films. Coming right after Aradhana’s stupendous success, Ittefaq’s Dilip Roy was the first such instance where the actor in Rajesh Khanna was tested against the star he’d unknowingly become. The fact that the actor triumphed against the star was no ittefaq.
Khamoshi (1970)
Probably an Eastman color deprived, black&white film was the only way to effectively deglamorize Khanna’s ever increasing colorful appeal. And it helped in making the film as a sum bigger than the parts – Khanna’s transition from a mentally challenged patient to a cured but love stricken man being the most prominent one. With Kishore Kumar, once again exemplifying the pain of Kaka’s character with his soulful tearjerker Woh Sham Kuch Ajeeb Thi, it was only a matter of time before he would become his full-time default playback.
Anand (1971)
Unarguably the magnum opus of Kaka’s career, Anand is almost synonymous with his name for more than one reason. Here was a superstar at the top of his game, an unprecedented phenomenon who could make million hearts stop with an innocuous roll of his eyes, a gentle head jerk and that “here’s looking at you kid” smile. But Hrishikesh Mukherjee chose to rid him of all that razzmatazz, draped him up in a simple Bengali kurta-pyjama and then didn’t even bother to throw in a leading lady to romance the biggest romantic hero of the time. And what you get is sheer magic and effortless charm of an actor who bowls you over with his unmatched energy and onscreen chutzpah. He is clearly at the top of his game. You cannot miss the confidence with which Khanna towers over a diffident, lanky Bachchan, who looks more like an intern training under the rockstar salesman of a firm. Nobody in his right mind would have thought that this very intern would eventually become the CEO of that firm one day.
That said, Rajesh Khanna sparkles in Anand like he has never before or ever since his meteoric rise and an equally cruel land sliding fall from grace.
Amar Prem (1972)
Rajesh Khanna never got to say tectonic shifting lines like “Khush to bahut hoge tum”, “Don ko pakadna…” or “Rishtey mein to hum tumhare baap hote hein”. He never even made a psychotic stammer of “Kkkkkkkkkiiiran” or Sunnydeolised cops into “Balwant Rai ke kutton”. The only line he ever had was – “Pushpa, I hate tears” said in his own tranquilizing style. If there’s one reason why Amar Prem is still amar, it is this. Based on a Bengali novel, Shakti Samanta’s film is probably the first commercial hindi movie that explores the endearing tale of platonic love between a man and a woman of the same age and probably suffering from the same woes. Not exactly a masterclass direction or screenplay to boast, the film has Kaka and his songs to the rescue once again. The way Anand Babu infuses exuberance into Pushpa’s dry life and film’s even drier narrative only underlines the effect and power of Kaka’s onscreen charisma at his peak.
Bawarchi (1972)
Bawarchi was probably made by Hrishi Da to satiate the growing urge of people who couldn’t get enough of Kaka’s self-less, joie de vivre act in Anand. Bawarchi was basically Anand repackaged with Lymphosarcoma of intestine replacing the Lymphosarcoma of middle-class joint families.
Kaka, not surprisingly, mesmerizes you with his performance, where yet again he was cast without a love interest and yet again he showed that it doesn’t matter.
Avishkaar (1974)
A deglamorized Rajesh Khanna cast as an over-worked urban husband struggling with marital discourse, Avishkaar was a daring attempt by the talented Basu Chatterjee at a time when 70s were starting to get really blaxploited – heroes’ hairdo was getting fuller, shirt collars were getting Elvisly longer and trouser bottoms were getting belled. Khanna delivered arguably his best performance in a role that required him once again to rid himself of all his superstar mannerisms and show restraint and subtleness in just the right doses. He won his last Filmfare Best Actor award for this film and deservedly so because he stuck his neck out and tried to do something endearingly different while he was still at the top, something the other stalwarts after him fell glaringly short of.
Roti (1974)
Roti was the closest Rajesh Khanna could come to playing Amitabh Bachchan and vice versa. He is Mangal Singh, your typical larger than life hero who does everything expected of him in the 3-hours running time from breaking jail on the day of his hanging, to masquerading into a village crusader who takes care of an elderly blind couple like their own son, to romancing the notorious village belle. Roti was also a bowdlerized version of Manmohan Desai's later films with Bachchan, with whom he found nirvana and churned out trash after trash after trash under the euphemism of formula films.
Namak Haraam (1973)
Namak Haraam is seen as ‘passing the baton’ movie by connoisseurs, primarily because it acts as an inflection point for two contemporaries stars – one on his way up and the other on his way down (at least in the hindsight). Unlike Anand, the Khanna-Bachchan pairing here was more even-steven. You definitely see a more confident, polished and suave Amitabh Bachchan, fresh from the success of Zanjeer, taking on the King of good times at his effervescent best. The fact that Bachchan’s character had shades of grey in it did allow him to take home more than his share of accolades from the audience. But no matter how imposing Bachchan’s anger was, Namak Haraam essentially remains a Rajesh Khanna film from its core.
It was not just a clash between two icons of Indian cinema, but also a clash of two economic models – Capitalism vs. Socialism. The classic scene where Khanna compares a peg of Black Label with a factory worker’s one month salary would have got it a standing ovation from Karl Marx himself.
Mere Jeevan Saathi (1972)
If there’s any film that comes closest to being called a quasi-documentary on Kaka’s short but unchallenged rule at the box-office, it is Mere Jeevan Saathi. Playing a popular artist, who has his ways with the women, Rajesh Khanna is in his element here. You can literally sense the actual hysteria and fan frenzy he must have commanded those days by just sitting back letting the film’s first half role. Kaka is just playing himself with women drooling right, left and center, till the tragedy strikes and he loses everything. MJS gives you one of Khanna's best film soundtracks, throwing one chartbuster after another – O Mere Dil Ke Chain, Chala Jaata Hoon, Diwana Lekar Aaya Hai, Kitne Sapne Kitne Arman, …all in the same film!!
It's only fair to say that Rajesh Khanna was like a bolt of lightning that struck Bollywood and changed it forever – for the better or worse, is debatable. He definitely changed the film-centric nature of Bollywood to that of star-centric, exacerbated further by Bachchan’s One-Man-Industry era. Many superstars came and went after him, some even played a longer and more defining innings while others managed to make a mark internationally but for that short period of four years (1969-73), the rage, fad and frenzy of Rajesh Khanna remain unmatched. And as they say, the light that burns the brightest burns for the shortest period of time.
RIP Rajesh Khanna, the original superstar.
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