“Time ho gaya hai, pack up.” Those were Rajesh Khanna’s last words, says Amitabh Bachchan in his blog.
Bachchan wrote that a close functionary informed him about Khanna’s last words on Wednesday when he gone to condole the death of India’s first superstar at his home Aashirwad.
Bachchan recalled his long experience with Khanna, whom he first saw as the winner of the Filmfare-Madhuri Talent Contest. It was the same contest for which Bachchan had also applied the following year, but was rejected.
“His film Aradhana was my next meeting with him, at the Rivoli Theatre in Connaught Place in New Delhi. The packed audience and their reactions to this young handsome man was impermeable,” wrote Bachchan.
The actor said he had left his settled job in Calcutta to seek the possibilities of joining the film industry. “But one look at Khanna made me realise that with people like him around, there would be little chance or opportunity for me!” Bachchan confessed.
Soon after that, Bachchan was cast opposite Khanna in Anand, which he describes as, “The moment that anyone came to know that I was working with the Rajesh Khanna, my importance grew. And I gloated in its wake.”
Bachchan said Khanna was simple and quiet. “In his boyish plainness, there was something that was regal in his demeanour. It was the magnet that attracted others to him — who at times were almost servile to him in nature,” Bachchan said.