Rajesh Khanna: The OG ‘King of Romance'

 Rajesh Khanna: The OG ‘King of Romance’ who irked Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Yash Chopra with his ‘starry tantrums’

On Rajesh Khanna's 81st birth anniversary, we look back at his illustrious career, record of delivering 15 consecutive hits and abrupt downfall.

Zindagi kaisi hai paheli, kabhi toh hasaaye, kabhi ye rulaaye’

There couldn’t have been a better song written for Rajesh Khanna – the handsome, twinkle-eyed heart-stealer of late 1960s and 1970s Hindi cinema. With his boy-next-door looks, chivalry and his swoon-worthy romantic actions, he robbed the audience of critical thinking and charmed them, especially women, with his roles of a lover. He came at a time when the audience was done revering middle-aged heroes (Rajendra Kumar, Dilip Kumar) and wanted a new generation actor to express their dreams and desires onscreen. Not just youngsters, but even the older generation lapped up this storehouse of talent.  

“In all my films, people identified strongly with my character. Every college girl wanted a boyfriend like me, every mother wanted her son to be like me, and every sister wanted her brother to be like me. All the married women dreamt of a husband like me. Together, they made Rajesh Khanna the screen idol that he was,” the actor had said in a 1989 interview.  

Rajesh Khanna was unlike today’s stars. He didn’t have a well-built physique or looks that would stop people in their tracks, yet he managed to turn heads as he brought a stamp of class and sensitivity to his characters. Moviegoers connected with him as he conveyed their emotional vulnerabilities on screen with the utmost sincerity and passion. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, as actor Rakhee told Etimes, believed, “Nobody can compete with Rajesh Khanna. It is impossible. He wasn’t there for his body and height but just for his face, smile and eyes.”  

While he did impress with his initial films like Aakhri Khat (1966), Raaz (1967) and Baharon Ke Sapne (1967), Khanna came to his own and became invincible with Aradhana (1969), Do Raaste (1969), Ittefaq (1969), Safar (1970), Kati Patang (1971), Khamoshi (1969),

Ittefaq (1969), Safar (1970), Kati Patang (1971), Khamoshi (1969), and several others. Actor Deepti Naval, who watched Khanna’s Aradhana thirteen times with her sister, told Scroll, 

 “He was the dream man of every girl. I felt no other actor could have done ‘Roop tera mastana’ like Rajesh Khanna, treading a fine line between forbidden love and desire…” Naval and her sister even wore a Guru kurta to watch his film Safar. “We were that crazy about Rajesh Khanna.” Not just the actor and her sister, millions of girls were in love with the ‘superstar’. He used to receive fan mail in abundance, some of which were supposedly written in blood. His car would be covered in lipstick marks wherever it was parked.  

Sharmila Tagore said in an interview with LAKSHY DREAM FOUNDATION GLOBAL NEWS , “Women came out in droves to see Kaka (Khanna). They would stand in queues outside the studios to catch a glimpse. They would marry his photographs, and they would pull at his clothes. Delhi girls were crazier for him than Mumbai girls. He needed police protection when he was in public. I have never seen anything like this before and since.”

Born Jatin Khanna, on December 29, 1942, in Amritsar, Punjab, the actor was brought up by foster parents, Chunnilal and Leelawati Khanna, and he never spoke of his biological parents. He was a much-pampered kid who attended Mumbai’s St Sebastian Goan High School, where he became friends with Ravi Kapoor, who later gained popularity as Jeetendra. After completing his studies at Kishinchand Chelleram College, 

Khanna, who was already doing theatre, decided to pursue acting. He approached several filmmakers with his pictures but got no response from them. But Khanna’s struggle story was a little different from others as he came from a well-to-do family that was willing to support him financially. Gautam Chintamani’s biography on the actor mentioned that he “drove to auditions in a car and had a monthly allowance of Rs 10,000.”

In 1965, he was presented with a unique opportunity as some of the famous producers and directors from the Hindi film industry, including BR Chopra, Guru Dutt, and Bimal Roy, organised a talent contest along with Filmfare to find a new face for the film industry.

Rajesh Khanna beat 10,000 contestants and won the 1965 All India Talent Contest organised by United Producers and Filmfare. The talent hunt contract specified that 12 different producers would sign the winner for 12 films. Hence, a golden chance to rise to stardom. The first film he signed was GP Sippy’s Raaz and subsequently, Chetan Anand approached him for Aakhri Khat. 

Though he was happy to have gotten two films early in his career, what bothered him was the call time for Raaz, which was 9 am. He told Bhawana Somaya for ‘Echoes of an Era’, “Now, waking up early is just not my style. I am not an early bird. From childhood, I have always risen late. My mother wouldn’t allow anyone to enter my room and disturb me. So when the director told me about attending shooting early in his career, what bothered him was the call time for Raaz, which was 9 am. He told Bhawana Somaya for ‘Echoes of an Era’, “Now, waking up early is just not my style. I am not an early bird. From childhood, I have always risen late. My mother wouldn’t allow anyone to enter my room and disturb me. So when the director told me about attending shooting early in the morning, my heart sank.”

On the day of the shoot, Khanna arrived at 11 am and instead of being apologetic, he hit back at a senior team member who questioned his behaviour despite being a newcomer, “To hell with the career and to hell with this film. My lifestyle cannot change for my career.” This remained the actor’s attitude throughout his career, as confirmed by Prem Chopra in one of his interviews.

 “Rajesh Khanna was a great actor, but he had this habit of reaching late all the time. Not everyone would take it when he landed late on sets. Hours after everyone reached and got ready, he would reach the sets.” Even in her latest appearance on Koffee With Karan, when Sharmila Tagore was asked to describe Khanna in two words, she replied, “Perpetually late.”

However, filmmakers grew habitual of Khanna’s habit of always turning up late and continued to cast him for his impeccable screen presence. The actor holds the record of delivering 17 consecutive super-hits in three years from 1969-71, which included 15 successive solo super-hit films, starting with Ittefaq (1969) and Aradhana (1969). Ramesh Deo, who played Dr Prakash in Anand, recalled that Khanna was perpetually late on the sets of Anand,

recalled that Khanna was perpetually late on the sets of Anand, and this would infuriate Hrishikesh Mukherjee. But as soon as he saw what the actor did in front of the camera, his anger would melt away. In a 2012 conversation with DNA, Deo said, “Rajesh used to enact the scene so well, that after the scene, Hrishi-da used to say, ‘Tumne itna aacha kam kiya hai, tumhare sau gunah maaf (You have done such good work that all your sins are forgiven).’”

By the time Anand released in 1971, Khanna had reached the pinnacle of success and had become a ‘phenomenon’. The mass hysteria around him remains unbeatable to this day. In fact, at one point, he himself felt, “next to God”.

“He was the biggest star ever. From 1969 to 1975, the high that he touched became a benchmark that nobody could breach. You could identify with him. He had a very charming smile. He had a good voice and he also got really good music. When a person’s stars start working in his favour, then he gets support from every sphere,” screenwriter Salim Khan once said about Khanna to BBC.

However, by the mid-seventies, Rajesh Khanna’s hold over the box office had begun to slip, increasing his insecurities. He only wished to be surrounded by people who praised him, and those who spoke anything which was not favourable to him became his enemy. His starry tantrums were no longer taken by filmmakers and he was once reportedly slapped by Mehmood when he was directing him in Janta Hawaldar. 

Yash Chopra also couldn’t handle his “superstar tantrums on a regular basis”. In 1973, when Khanna worked with the emerging star Amitabh Bachchan, he believed nobody could replace him. Actor Asrani recalled in a 2018 interview with Filmfare, “There was a basic courtesy between the two but Rajesh suffered from a superiority complex. He believed ‘no one can shake me. I am too powerful.’ Throughout the film, there was palpable tension between the two.”

The dried-up offers were also a result of Khanna’s unwillingness to reinvent himself. “He continued the same style and those films did not work either. That is why he had to (suffer a downfall). He could not face that thing – where I was and where I am now,” Prem Chopra had said while explaining

and one night after drinking, he started yelling from the terrace of his Mumbai bungalow, Ashirvaad. This was the phase of Khanna’s career when he had seven consecutive flops. “One after another, seven films had just flopped in a row. It was raining, pitch-dark and up there alone on my terrace, I lost control. 

 I yelled out. ‘Parvardigar, hum garibon ka itna sakt imtihan na le ki hum tere vajood ko inkar kar de (God, don’t test my patience to such an extent that I question your very existence).’ Of course, Dimple (Kapadia, his wife) and my staff came running, thinking that I had gone insane. It was because success hit me so much that I couldn’t take the failure,” he shared with Movie Magazine in 1990.

One of the actor’s dialogues from Daag (1973) sums up the ups and downs of his life, which he later recreated on the stage at an event with much of the film industry in attendance, “Izzatein, shohratein, ulfatein, chahatein, sab kuch iss duniya mein rehta nahin/ Aaj main hun jahan kal koi aur tha/ Ye bhi ek daur hai woh bhi ek daur tha. (Nothing is permanent in life. somebody else was here where I am today).” A day came in Khanna’s life when he, who once felt “next to God”, thought of himself to be a ‘dog’.  

He told Filmfare, “I used to ask my man Prashant to tell the caller that Kaka is having a bath and call up again just to feign importance and attend to the call only when the caller called up four times. God punished me and a time came when I used to stand next to the phone hoping that I would get a call. And when one day a call came, I picked the receiver and said,’ Kaka here,’ and then came the reply, ‘Kaun Kaka? Wrong Number.’ That was when I realized that I was not GOD but DOG.”

Rajesh Khanna continued to work in the 80s, but unlike the early 1970s, he failed to pull people to cinema halls. One of the last notable roles that he did was in Rishi Kapoor’s Aa Ab Laut Chelein in 1999.

At the peak of his career, Khanna married 16-year-old Dimple Kapadia, whom he met on a flight to Ahmedabad. The two got married six months before Kapadia’s Bobby released. 

But Kapadia knew her marriage with the superstar wouldn’t last long from the moment she stepped into his house. On The Pritish Nandy Show, the actor said she could not understand the superstar. Revisiting the pre-separation phase of her life, Kapadia said, “I think we were two very different kinds of people. I was probably very young to understand what was happening to this man, who was a superstar. 

Revisiting the pre-separation phase of her life, Kapadia said, “I think we were two very different kinds of people. I was probably very young to understand what was happening to this man, who was a superstar. I have never been able to understand stars and their behaviour pattern at all because I am not one myself. I just couldn’t understand.”

The duo separated in 1982 and have two daughters – Twinkle Khanna, who was born in 1974, and Rinkie Khanna, born in 1977.  

Before marrying Dimple, Rajesh Khanna was in a seven-year-long relationship with Anju Mahendru. When he married Kapadia, he deliberately made his baraat parade before Anju’s house. After separating from Kapadia, he also got involved with Tina Munim, who allegedly left him because he didn’t divorce Kapadia.

Journalist Bhawana Somaaya summarised Khanna’s life in a Screen article which was published in 1987: “Rajesh Khanna became more rigid and withdrew into his shell. If Anju couldn’t cope with his success, Dimple couldn’t cope with his failure.”  

But, all the people he was close to returned to him during his last days, including Dimple Kapadia and her daughter, and Anju Mahendru. He was admitted to Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital due to prolonged illness, but he insisted on dying in his bedroom. The family brought him back to Aashirvaad and tried to lift his spirit by saying that he will be well soon. But Khanna knew it was time on July 18, 2012. Yasser Usman revealed the actor’s last word in his biography, “Time up ho gaya [My time is up] . . . Pack up!”