In that period, he was extraordinarily popular. His “Punjabi boy next door” looks made him a rage among sections of female fans. A series of emotional tragedies in which he acted — Anand, Safar and even Aradhana, though the tragic protagonist of that film was Sharmila Tagore rather than Rajesh Khanna — gave his career a certain weight.
Then, almost just like that, Rajesh Khanna imploded. His films became predictable. His acting talent in non-tragic roles was exposed as woefully inadequate. His attempt to re-invoke the old emotionalism fell flat in me-too films like the forgettable Amar Deep. As a comedy actor, he had no significant success outside Bawarchi. The man who gave us Amar Prem and Namak Haraam also gave us spectacular duds such as Red Rose.
With the passage of time, the exaggerated facial gestures and flick of the chin that had so infuriated “Babu Moshai” (Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Anand) — and so endeared Rajesh Khanna to audiences — came to be associated with merely overacting in say Rajput or Kudrat. By the 1980s, Rajesh Khanna was reduced to playing second fiddle to Jeetendra in Maqsad, part of the assembly-line Sridevi-Jayapradha films.
The purpose of this assessment is not to mock Rajesh Khanna. It is only to point out that the rear-view mirror is a tricky contrivance. Perhaps it gets us to exaggerate his influence on Hindi cinema.
If all of this is true, the indignant may well ask, why are people recalling their Rajesh Khanna phase with such wistfulness? Anybody who grew up in the 1970s or followed Hindi cinema in that period has some bittersweet, melancholic memory of the Rajesh Khanna phenomenon.
“Kaka”, as the man was nicknamed, shot up like a meteor. His romance with Anju Mahendru, affair with gossip columnist Devyani Chaubal, sudden wedding with the much younger Dimple Kapadia — all of those were fodder for a film press just coming into its own. Cricketer Ashok Mankad — another prodigy who never quite fulfilled his promise — is believed to have nicknamed himself “Kaka” after his favourite actor.
In a time when Indian popular culture scarcely got international recognition, BBC made a documentary on Rajesh Khanna’s rock-star status.
His following among young women was the subject of peer envy. Many of these women, and their husbands, are now in their 50s. To them, as well as those 10 or 15 years younger, seeing the old, haggard Rajesh Khanna is a rite-of-passage moment, a sign of their own greying years — and a rekindling of the effervescence of youth and that lost world full of promise.
Of course, such analysis is not true just in the context of Rajesh Khanna. All nostalgia is as much about the object of the nostalgia as about the person undergoing the nostalgia. As such, there must be something about the Rajesh Khanna phenomenon that goes beyond just intimations of the movie buff’s own mortality. What it that source code we are seeking?
Frankly, it is the music and lyricism in the songs of Rajesh Khanna’s films. They gave them and him — films and lead actor — a resonance and longevity far beyond what that immediate context deserved.
Many of those who remember Rajesh Khanna and his films actually remember the songs in those films. To those who listen to Kishore Kumar hits from the 1960s and 1970s on their iPod Shuffles, some songs are evergreen even if the films that encompassed them are barely within the grasp of memory.
Rajesh Khanna had an amazing repertoire of such films. Listening to Woh shaam kuch ajeeb thi (Khamoshi) even for the hundredth time can be a cathartic, searing experience. Equally, to watch Rajesh Khanna and Waheeda Rehman on screen while that song is heard can be cringing. Zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain... and even the peppy Jai Jai Shiv Shankar are two perennial hits from an eminently silly film called Aap ki Kasam (Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz), an immature, clumsy handling of the theme of marital suspicion. Even Safar (Jeevan se bhari teri aankhen; Zindagi ka safar; Ho tumko jo pasand) palls as a film in comparison to its music.
There was a time and a particular business environment that ensured a film was a success only because of its music. Thirty or 40 years ago, in an era when mass-production of cassettes was unknown, LPs were expensive and CDs and MP3 players sheer fantasy, the economies of scale principle did not apply to buying Hindi film music. As such, one went to see a film to hear its songs. As Lata Mangeshkar once put it in an interview, “Cinema is an excuse for music.” Rajesh Khanna was a product of that film economy.
To be fair, he was not alone. Consider Aandhi (1975), a film said to be based on the life of Indira Gandhi but, according to its writer, the late Kamaleshwar, depicting the story of Nandini Satpathy, the former chief minister of Orissa. From Tum aa gaye ho... to Tere bina zindagi se koi... Aandhi’s songs are memorable and moving. On a dark and sombre evening, with the lights dimmed and in the silence of solitude, they can still make you cry.
Do you remember the film though? It was embarrassingly mediocre. Sanjeev Kumar tried his best to carry it on his shoulders, but Suchitra Sen, as his estranged politico wife, was completely miscast. Rarely has such a sensitive score been so wasted. If Aandhi is still cherished, it is a tribute to R.D. Burman and Gulzar more than the star cast.
Cutting as it may sound, this is as valid for so many of Rajesh Khanna’s films. As we grieve at his physical frailty and wish him a quick and sustained recovery, let us not wish away that reality.