My memories of Rajesh Khanna

When I logged into Facebook on the morning of Wednesday, the 18th of July, I saw a link to “vaada tera vaada” from one of my friends, saying "RIP, Rajesh Khanna".

I immediately logged onto Twitter – it is my source for latest news (and links to news) around the world. And yes, #RIP Rajesh Khanna was trending as the top item on Twitter for India.

Now I’ve seen hoax RIP hashtags on Twitter before – and there was just this very slight hope within me that this was a hoax – but I knew, deep within myself and with an increasingly sinking feeling, that this was it. This was the end.

I took a deep breath and slowly began reading the tweets and the attached links. They were pouring in  like a tsunami wave – Twitter is known as THE medium for “outrage”,  but that does it great injustice. Outrage is just a show of emotion – and Twitter does emotion brilliantly in 140 characters.

All this while, my heart was sinking. Like most people, I did know that Rajesh was in pretty bad shape. So in a sense, it was not entirely a surprise or a shock. But somewhere within me, there was still the hope that he would get better, that he would be around for some more years. After all, he was just 69 – and that’s young, by today’s standards.

But it was not to be. The man who loved to die in his films because his audience seemed to like his films to end that way, decided it was time for real life to imitate reel life just this one last time.

Memories of Rajesh movies, memories of Rajesh songs began flooding my mind.  I immediately went to youtube to watch some of his songs. Not his most famous songs, but some songs that I personally like watching again and again. 

Where Rajesh stands out, in my opinion.

I started with “rona kabhi nahin rona” from Apna Desh. No glamour here, no heroine, no silk kurta – just a chacha singing to his brother’s kids. I remember singing this song a lot to my niece way back in the early 80s when she was about three.

I then moved on to “yahan wahan saare, jahaan pe tera raaj hai” from Aan Milo Sajna. This song took me right back to my childhood. This is a Rajesh song close to my heart – again it is “pure” Rajesh, if you know what I mean. I even tweeted this, saying “tere hi to sar pe mohabbat ka taj hai”.

And so I went on. I began posting songs on Facebook – only to a select group. (A lot of my friends are non-Indian and presumably do not know who Rajesh Khanna is. I did not want to spam them).

 Rajesh-Mumtaz with “gore rang pe na itna gumaan kar” (Roti), one of my favorites.

 Then “ye jo chilman hai” (Mehboob Ki Mehndi), another of my favorites – Rajesh in kurta singing an ode to a beautiful Leena Chandavarkar.  Beautiful poetry here by Anand Bakshi.

Then one of my childhood favorites – I must have sung this song (badly) at least a million times. “Kahin door jab din dhal jaaye” (Anand).

And “ye shaam mastaani” from Kati Patang.

And “ye kya hua, kaise hua” from Amar Prem.

And the fun-filled “mujh se bhala ye kaajal tera” from The Train. - Rajesh with Nanda.

And another of my favorites, “o mere dil ke chain” from Mere Jeevan Saathi. Another one of those "million times, badly-sung" songs by me.

I did not want to drive my friends crazy – I stopped with just these songs, I think. I did listen to many more though – “gusssa itna haseen hai to pyar kaisa hoga” (Maryada), “nainon mein nindiya hai” (Joroo Ka Ghulam)…

In what was still an indescribably incredibly inconsolably despondent mood, I then updated my Facebook status to:

Kya samjhega aalam koi
Badaa bhaari hai aaj dil ye mera
Ki le gaye ho saath safar pe tumhaare
Tukda jo kabhi tha dil ye mera

(Who will understand my mood today
The weight that bears upon my heart
For you’ve taken with you on your journey
A piece that used to once be my heart)

Yes, I know it is rubbish poetry. But I was in no frame of mind to construct anything remotely comprehensible at that time.

The thing is, the news of Rajesh Khanna's death took me right back to my childhood. I am talking of the late 60s/early 70s. I was only a young boy then but I vividly remember watching his films then. I vividly remember many of the songs from his films even if I did not quite understand then the storyline.

For me, Rajesh Khanna was the first star I “knew”.  I’d heard of Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand – and also Shammi Kapoor. I’d seen their movies as well. But their time at their peak  was “before” my time (in the case of Shammi, “just before” my time).

Rajesh, on the other hand, peaked just at the time that I began watching, and becoming aware, of movies. So I could “feel” his popularity in a way that I could not feel the popularity of the big names before him.

And what popularity! By now a lot of people have talked about how he was “the first superstar”, “THE phenomenon”.  You hear lines (sometimes sounding patronizing) saying “only people who lived during that period will quite understand what he was”. 

Even if one allows for a bit of misty-eyed exaggeration, I think it is fair to say that it is not much more than a bit. I will speak only from my own experience. Yes, I was very young then, so my judgment may be questionable, but there was enough evidence all around me to suggest that there was Rajesh Khanna – and there was everybody else.

The first time I remember hearing his name was when one of my sister’s friends was chatting with my sister. She had just seen Baharon Ke Sapne and told my sister “The movie is ok. I actually didn’t like it very much. But oh, Rajesh Khanna….”. 

I suspect there were many, many more who went “Oh, Rajesh Khanna…” in the years to come.

I distinctly remember Aradhana’s success. I got to see it much after it was 

released – but I remember the impact it had everywhere around me.  There was hardly a day you did not hear an Aradhana song. Either on the radio, or somebody singing or humming it. That is how it seemed to me at least. “Mere sapnon ki rani” and “roop tera mastana” practically competed with each other for which was the more popular song of the time – any other song would have come a VERY distant third. 

The measure of Aradhana’s popularity can best be gauged by the fact that my paternal grandmother, who did not know a word of Hindi, and certainly knew no other Hindi songs, had heard the songs of Aradhana. We didn't have a tape recorder then, so if at all we heard anything, it was on radio. Various songs would be playing - but the moment an Aradhana song played - her eyes would light up and she'd say “Aradhana!” (Well, considering it probably played every single day, it might not have been such a difficult task to recognise the songs, I suppose).  

In 1975, during our summer holidays, we had gone for a family event deep in rural South India - in Thanjavur district, often considered then the bastion of anti-Hindi sentiment. There I got to spend some time with my cousins. They spoke Tamil and English – but not a word of Hindi. Anyway, they started playing Antakshari – and as one would expect,Tamil songs were being tossed around with great gusto. With my count of known Tamil songs then being a grand nil,  I must confess I felt totally out of place.

One of my cousins, seeing my lost look, stopped and said “Hindi?” I said “Yes”. “OK” he said. And immediately started with “mere sapnon ki rani…”. The others joined in. Ok, it was just the first couple of lines, the words were quite messed up, the accent even more so - but it felt just SO good.  And then there was the inevitable follow-up with “roop tera”. 


To date, I consider these as two of the most popular songs of Hindi cinema that I’ve known in my life - not counting songs from before my time.

Aradhana was THAT popular. Rajesh Khanna became an overnight star. Sharmila – already a popular heroine – went right to the top. I remember Madhuri magazine, having a discussion about who the No.1 heroine was – they had photos of three heroines (the ones in contention) – Asha Parekh, Waheeda Rehman and Sharmila Tagore.

When, in the late 90s, Kaho Na Pyar Hai – with its very popular numbers - became a super-duper hit, catapulting Hrithik Roshan to overnight fame,  it reminded me of Aradhana – and Rajesh Khanna – all those years ago. Hrithik did not quite manage to do a Rajesh follow-up act though. He became ONE of the stars, whereas Rajesh left all others behind to emerge as the one and only superstar.

Like I’ve said, in those years, there was Rajesh – and there was everybody else. It is not that others were not delivering hits. Dharmendra and Shashi Kapoor, for example, also did well in that period. But the Rajesh tsunami was such that everybody seemed to have eyes for him - and him only.  

There is this general impression that it was the female constituency, particularly young girls, that was crazy about Rajesh Khanna. True, but that's not the entire story. People of ALL generations, all age groups, male-female, were pretty crazy about him at that time. 

There were a whole lot of newcomers in that period. I remember Vinod Mehra, Rakesh Roshan, Parikshat Sahni (then called Ajay Sahni), even Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha and Vinod Khanna (both starting off in villain roles), Randhir Kapoor, Anil Dhawan, Navin Nischol, Vijay Arora, Kabir Bedi, Rakesh Pandey, Romesh Sharma, Vikram…I’m sure there were others too that I have not named here. Some of these definitely tried to copy Rajesh Khanna. Rakesh Roshan, for example. But they could not QUITE pull it off.

That was the time when people would blindly go to watch a movie just because it was a Rajesh movie. They were guaranteed that smile, that look, that nod of the head – and some glorious songs. Whether the heroine was Asha Parekh or Sharmila Tagore or Mumtaz or Tanuja or Hema Malini or anybody else, it did not matter.  Even if the film did not have a heroine opposite him, it did not matter. All that mattered was that it had Rajesh Khanna.

He did the odd cameo too. Not many talk about it – but I thought he did a lovely cameo as the flower vendor in the tear-jerker Anuraag.

I saw almost all his movies from that early period, in those early years of the 70s. I will not name the movies here, it is almost the entire list of that time. I knew most of the songs from his movies by heart. You just heard them so many times that you could not help it.

I cannot say with absolute certainty what my very first Rajesh movie was. I think it was Sacha Jhootha, though it could just as well have been Do Raaste. I remember seeing these movies very early on, as also Maryada. 

True, in terms of superstardom, his reign at the top was all-too-brief.


And true, towards the end of his golden period, his mannerisms took over and watching him became difficult. His hamming, together with a questionable selection of movies, resulted in his loyal fan-base getting disenchanted and beginning to feel let down. (I know, I was one of them).

And yes, that was exactly the time when Amitabh Bachchan’s star was rising with some excellent performances in movies like Zanjeer and Deewar. The times were changing - the mood in the country was becoming increasingly cynical and anti-establishment. Romance was taking a backseat, anger was in the front row. There were protests, bandhs, strikes all over the place - I remember that even as a young boy.


Movies are usually a reflection of the times and the society in which, and for which, they are made. More and more people began identifying more easily with the "angry young man" image of Amitabh than the soft, romantic image of Rajesh (which was anyway beginning to get seriously dented with his exaggerated mannerisms). But there is no doubt that, in addition to self-created reasons for his self-destruction, there was the external environment too that was beginning to become alien to Rajesh's style.


Oh, how I hated the fact that Amitabh was taking over Rajesh's place. I had nothing against Amitabh - in fact I grudgingly liked him, especially in his movies with Jaya Bhaduri. And I loved Majboor, one of his most under-rated performances, in my opinion and still one of my Amitabh favorites.

But nobody, NOBODY, took Rajesh's place. He was going through a bad phase, that was all. That's how I convinced myself - though I secretly knew that the magic was wearing off. And well, if everybody in the country was angry about something or the other at that time, I was angry at the movies Rajesh was doing, I was angry at his hamming. But I was still a Rajesh loyalist and I wasn't willing as yet to allow another person to sit on that throne. 

I think a lot of Rajesh fans must have switched loyalties and become Amitabh fans at that time. At that age, in school at least, you tended to be identified either with Rajesh or with Amitabh.  To be fair to those who switched, it was really becoming very difficult to continue to defend Rajesh. So I wouldn't call them fair-weather fans. 


I remember one such ex-Rajesh fan even challenging me "Tell me, can Rajesh act like Amitabh in Deewar?" I struggled with my defence - and could only manage "No, but I don't WANT Rajesh to act like Amitabh. I just want Rajesh to be Rajesh. Like he used to be". 


Oh, those mid- and late-70s were difficult times for a Rajesh fan.

And yes, Rajesh’s lack of professionalism, his poor public relations, his whims, his lack of maintenance – all of these, individually seriously problematic but collectively conclusively disastrous,  ensured that his career, once it tipped over, went into free fall. 

When you read about some of those stories today, they sound outrageous but one needs to bear in mind that those were different times. The film industry has changed a lot over the years. Today actors are far more professional, they are extremely conscious about not just their appearance but their image, they are often very boringly politically correct, they are very media-savvy. I think Rajesh was on such a cloud that he did not pay much attention to these non-acting attributes required for an actor's sustained success in the industry. 

At that age, I read about all this only in magazines - mainly Filmfare, Star and Style and Stardust. Film magazines were not subscribed to (or encouraged) in our household but we would always get hold of them from friends. So there was plenty of film information (and gossip) available to us.

Even at that age, I was very sceptical of what I read in these magazines. So to me, what I saw on screen was what I made of an actor or a situation. In any case, these backstage problems (of unprofessional behaviour) were something that did not matter to me. The hamming yes, the backstage problems, no. They were all none of my business anyway.

 I do remember reading a lot of anti-Rajesh Khanna writing in the late 70s. It was as if everybody had been waiting for him to fall. As if everybody was out to get him, waiting for that chance to get that dagger in, and to twist it.

That his personal life was also becoming a mess, did not help one bit. At that time, it felt like any news about Rajesh was only bad news – nobody seemed to have a good word to say about him.  And the witch-hunt seemed to go on, for ever and ever.

 So if we are to keep score, I am pretty much convinced that he paid the price for his failings in far greater measure than he deserved.  No wonder then that he chose to lead a somewhat secluded life in his later years.

I don’t think Rajesh ever totally got over the shock of his sudden fall from grace. When you are at THAT height – and the fall is SO precipitous, it is difficult to keep your senses around you. Your sycophants leave you, your so-called friends leave you – life suddenly becomes very lonely.

What Rajesh critics often fail to mention is that he did realize his mistakes later. I clearly remember seeing an interview where he admits his mistakes. He does not blame anybody else for them.  Surely that counts for something?

I stopped seeing Rajesh Khanna movies after a while. They became painful to watch – if only because I knew what he had once been. Maybe there was the odd good movie at that time – I just did not have the heart to watch it. I call that the “Janta Hawaldar” period – I remember this being one of the movies I expressly skipped at that time. 

I do remember watching Thodisi Bewafai and Avtaar though.  Both of them were telecast on Doordarshan (as the Sunday evening movie) - and I’d heard they were good. So, rather hesitatingly, I decided to watch them – and am glad I did. I quite liked them. 

In the last couple of years, I’ve caught up with some of the Rajesh movies I’d avoided in my Rajesh blackout phase. Movies like Rajput and Kudrat. I thought he was OK in both of them. 

But, on the whole, my memories of Rajesh will be of the Rajesh of my childhood. 

With his death, he has taken a part of my childhood with him. But I certainly bear him no grudge – for he gave me so much more in my childhood, so many wonderful moments to cherish and enjoy, that I will remain ever-grateful to him for this.

As I sign off (still emotional), I cannot help thinking that a tribute to Rajesh without some of his songs would be oh-so-incomplete.


So I will leave you with some of his songs that I feel he could be singing to his various constituencies. 

For his critics (whose numbers ran into millions), I have "mere naseeb mein aye dost, tera pyar nahin" (dear friend, it was not in my destiny to get your love). Anand Bakshi's lyrics in this song are just mind-blowing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPVvXlnV3Vg

For his fans (whose numbers hopefully outnumbered his critics), I have "maine tere liye hi saat rang ke sapne chune, sapne sureele sapne". (I have picked dreams of seven different colors for only you, sweet dreams). Gulzar's lyrics here - quite typical, actually.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC8DuvNCjbY

For children, I think his message to them (actually Anand Bakshi's message in Kishore Kumar's voice) is invaluable - "rona kabhi nahin rona". Simple words, deep message - "jo apna nahin, tum uske liye, jo apna hai, nahin khona" (In your pursuit of something that doesn't belong to you, don't lose what you do have).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw4-8SmRXow

For the youth (and with his message to take care of the elderly thrown in), I think he'd have liked to exhort them to enjoy their youth and make the most of it with "yahan wahaan saare jahaan mein tera raj hai". Anand Bakshi again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVibx0Y9Thc

For the female constituency (and one need have no fear about that number not running into many millions), I can imagine him singing one of my favorite romantic numbers - with that nod of the head of course. The song, with a gorgeous Leena Chandavarkar, with beautiful lyrics (Anand Bakshi again!) and Rafi saab's voice. Oh, how I love the fact that this is Rafi saab's voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I1cs6m8hcc


Thank you SO MUCH for everything, Rajesh Khanna. I guess we were just fortunate to have you with us for as long as we did. You will always live on in our hearts. Rest In Peace.  And do enjoy your time up there with Kishore and RD. 

As for me, well, I can only say chhoti chhoti baaton ki hai yaadein badin.

And if I may call you my yaar, I'd like to also add nafrat ki duniya ko chhod ke pyar ki duniya mein, khush rehna mere yaar.