While trawling through Wikipedia, the web dictionary after a Google search on Rajesh Khanna, the Wiki threw up responses about his hysterical female fan following. Excerpts from the dictionary discuss letters written in blood and queues of hundreds of women when Rajesh Khanna could be on outdoor location for a shoot.
Dinesh Raheja, former Movie magazine editor recalls with a laugh, “Why are you talking about girls? Even my daadi (grandmother) was crazy about Rajesh Khanna. In fact, since he touched my daadi's feet at a marriage years ago, she was never the same."
Raheja explains, “In a non-professional capacity, I remember seeing Rajesh Khanna shooting years ago, after I was a schoolboy. The unit was shooting at Worli Sea Face. The ocean Face was very different than what it's now.
It was very quiet and there have been not too many people, we'd cycle at the promenade. That day the ocean Face was teeming with people but Rajesh Khanna remained unfazed. He was very, very protective of his co-star Sharmila, the very best gentleman really.”
Schoolboy fascination turned to professional respect. Raheja recalls days in Rajesh Khanna’s office “we would discuss a typical passion - films, over coffee. He was such an interesting conversationalist. It was said that he is very difficult but I DISCOVERED him really easy going.”
When two superstars walk right into a hotel together, you can expect a hi-decibel ego clash. There has been none of that after Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna walked into Centaur hotel together for a canopy shoot for Movie magazine years ago.
Raheja says, “It took just a few time for the ice to thaw. But it surely did, they usually both gave me fantastic interviews and were very complimentary towards each other, which was amazing,” ends the present editor of Bollywood News Service.
Senior showbiz journalist Chaitanya Padukone says Rajesh Khanna was “a staunch Ganesh follower and frequently went to Titwala for Ganesh worship. Within the latter years, past his heyday, I did notice he had become a trifle irritable and was more impulsive that he was before. He was a person of robust likes and dislikes.
I recall particularly, when I was waiting outside J W Marriott at Juhu, post a movie event where Rajesh Khanna was the manager guest. This was greater than 10 years ago, I FEEL. There has been some more or less public transport flash strike then.
I was standing outside, wondering how one can get home, when ‘Kaka’ came by in his car. He was sitting next to the chauffeur while his secretary sat behind. He asked me with some mirth: ‘what are you doing, do you could have a date?’ I said, ‘No there's a strike; I'M wondering get home’.
He said, no worries and gave me a boost in his car, all of the technique to Tardeo, while he lived in Bandra! That is the roughly man he was.”
Padukone also remembered how once at a party, Rajesh Khanna, “turned up in beard and dark glasses. Youngsters didn't recognize him, and that i wrote a work for this paper itself, on how youngsters were ignoring and pushing past a person who their parents will need to have worshipped. He was very touched by that piece,” said Padukone, saying it proved how sensitive he was, beneath that thick-skinned veneer that stars must cultivate in the event that they must take what's written about them.
“I knew him so well, so I'VE such a lot of anecdotes however the person who stands proud probably the most is what a super host Rajesh Khanna was. Once, he invited me to shooting in Chennai. Somebody came home to fetch me and take me to the airport.
He accompanied me at the flight to Chennai, escorted me to the hotel and helped me check in, there: I had a message from Rajesh Khanna saying: welcome to Chennai, I'VE gone to look a film, once I am back, we can have dinner together. The person only left once Rajesh Khanna came in.
“We had dinner in his suite in conjunction with others, and he made sure I had hot rotis while he had cold ones. I even saw he took the cold roti from my plate, put it in his and gave me the recent one who. was his style and his attention to detail. I DON'T think anyone can match this,” signed off Pradhan.
When the arclights are off and autograph books go into oblivion, it's not hits however the little things that one does which might be remembered. Today, above gun guna rahe hain bhawrein khil rahi hai kali kali.
'I am alive' MiD DAY photographer Satyajit Desai recalls going to Kaka’s house in February this year, as rumours gained traction that he was not more. Desai, the quintessential, hard-nosed journalist, first called a telephone number belonging to Kaka, while he was outside Rajesh Khanna’s home.
Courtesy: Mid-Day.com
