With each film of his becoming a bigger hit than the one preceding it, [Rajesh] Khanna started believing that he was a king of sorts. But, deep within, he seemed to know that factors unseen and unknown played a great role in how things had shaped up. It was perhaps this feeling that prompted him to make a beeline to buy Rajendra Kumar’s bungalow, ‘Dimple’, when the jubilee star put it up for sale.
Kumar had come to Bombay following Partition and it was his dream to purchase a house in the city that had given him recognition. He had initially refused B.R. Chopra’s songless experiment Kanoon (1960), but when he got to know about the availability of the bungalow, he readily agreed to do not just Kanoon but also two more to pay for the house. When Kumar bought the house, it was said to be haunted, even referred to as ‘bhoot bangla’, but upon Manoj Kumar’s advice, Rajendra Kumar performed a series of pujas before shifting in. He named the house ‘Dimple’ after his daughter and went on to become the ‘jubilee’ star after he moved in. In the late 1960s, Kumar built another house and put Dimple on the market. Like Kumar, Khanna agreed to do a film for a south Indian producer that featured him and an elephant, only to get the money to buy the house. Khanna wanted to retain the name ‘Dimple’ in the hope that the house and Rajendra Kumar’s luck would rub off on him, but Kumar had already named his new house ‘Dimple’ and refused to allow Khanna to retain the name.
Khanna christened the house ‘Aashirwad’ and, to be on the safer side, performed a havan to ward off any leftover negative energy before moving in.
Once Khanna moved into Aashirwad, the façade of being a king was complete, with the garage of the house turned into a huge bar where Khanna held court. Khanna made tens of producers wait endlessly outside the fabled durbar, granting audience only once they had done time. He would emerge in his famous silk lungi–kurta and take his position at a chair that was conspicuously placed a little higher than the others to differentiate between the king and his subjects. Only a select few had access to the inner sanctum and many a times, those waiting outside would tell the ones who passed by to put in a good word. Johny Bakshi was one such person.
Bakshi had met Khanna on the sets of Do Raaste where he was a production controller and recalls how Khanna enjoyed being starry because he could get away with it. Bakshi remembers more than a handful of occasions when Khanna wouldn’t entertain a phone call from even someone like Shakti Samanta on the pretext of being ‘busy’, while in reality they would be sitting inside and gossiping. ‘He would say, “Keh do sahab busy hain … ek ghante mein phone karein” when he could easily take the call.’ Sometimes, Khanna would pick one person and make him the joker of the pack. Johny Bakshi ascribes this particular trait to Khanna’s attempt at emulating Raj Kapoor. ‘There were only two people in films whose feet Khanna touched – one was G.P.Sippy and other was Raj Kapoor – and like the showman, Khanna, too, would go for one person.’
Besides having fun at the expense of one particular person throughout the course of an evening, like Raj Kapoor, Khanna also liked the idea of flunkies, yes-men and chamchas hanging around. Shyam Keswani, a lawyer who came in contact with Khanna through Shakti Samanta, was one of the regulars and recalls how he’d see grim-looking producers sitting outside as if it were a government office.
Khanna’s rise even inspired chants such as ‘Upar Aka, Neeche Kaka’ (God in the heavens, Kaka on earth) that left little doubt about the hallowed position Khanna enjoyed. The unfortunate producers who had to conform to Khanna’s godlike status simply appealed to anyone who could enter the sanctum sanctorum to put in a kind word. Inside, copious amounts of whisky would flow endlessly through the night and most of those present would sing praises of King Kaka.
At times, Khanna would be mystified by his own success and seek approbation from all quarters. He would constantly look for people who could tell him that he was good and even deserved his success. He might not have taken his fame and popularity seriously enough, but took the adulation it brought a little too seriously. Those who didn’t agree with him or presented a somewhat contrarian point of view, even for the sake of argument, were often shown the door. The manner in which Khanna supposedly banished people from his court was nothing less than high theatrics; he would weigh the words that didn’t meet his approval and proclaim, ‘Aapko humara durbar chhodna padega’ (You’ll have to leave my court).
Night after night, the same saga continued and the mornings that followed would usually begin long after the sun was up. In an interview given in the early 1990s, Khanna himself recounted how reaching the sets on time was a challenging task. It is hard to imagine, but Khanna had reported late for the first day of shooting Raaz. Now that he was the brightest star on the horizon, it’d be laughable to expect punctuality from him. Ketan Anand believes that while Khanna never really troubled his father Chetan during Aakhri Khat, much was made of Khanna’s latecoming. He maintains that, barring a few stars, none reported on time, especially if it was a 9 a.m. shift, and perhaps Khanna was singled out because of his infamous all-night binges. Ashim Samanta doesn’t remember his father or any other senior filmmaker ever being a part of the durbar either.
However, much like Khanna’s renown, the stories of his drinking attained notoriety. But no one seemed to mind Khanna’s shenanigans as long as he delivered at the box office. He could be as late as he felt like, but once he was in front of the camera, everything seemed fine. He would never differentiate between producers, irrespective of the banner, and treated everyone equally. Many a times, he even forfeited pending dues in order to let his producers release their films.
If the activities within the confines of Aashirwad suggested the presence of a king, the throng of fans lined up along Carter Road in front of the house only validated the sovereign’s existence. Fan mail written in blood, chewing gum stuck to Khanna’s lips on pictures and posters for hours before being consumed, women marrying an absentee Khanna with his photographs doing the needful, and girls covering his white cars with red lipstick spoke of the level of adulation he enjoyed. On the other hand, men wanted to be like him and even started dressing up in the fabled ‘guru’ kurtas that Khanna popularized. Crafted by Baldev Pathak, who designed Khanna’s costumes till 1979, the guru kurta was a rage among not just men but also women. Pathak’s store Shrimaan Costumes would attract customers from as far as Calcutta and he once sold over 2,000 pieces after Khanna wore it. Much like the actor’s popularity turned his address on Carter Road into a tourist spot, Aashirwad also did more than needful to feed the legend of Rajesh Khanna.
Excerpted with permission from Dark Star The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna by Gautam Chintamani, Harper Collins India.
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Kumar had come to Bombay following Partition and it was his dream to purchase a house in the city that had given him recognition. He had initially refused B.R. Chopra’s songless experiment Kanoon (1960), but when he got to know about the availability of the bungalow, he readily agreed to do not just Kanoon but also two more to pay for the house. When Kumar bought the house, it was said to be haunted, even referred to as ‘bhoot bangla’, but upon Manoj Kumar’s advice, Rajendra Kumar performed a series of pujas before shifting in. He named the house ‘Dimple’ after his daughter and went on to become the ‘jubilee’ star after he moved in. In the late 1960s, Kumar built another house and put Dimple on the market. Like Kumar, Khanna agreed to do a film for a south Indian producer that featured him and an elephant, only to get the money to buy the house. Khanna wanted to retain the name ‘Dimple’ in the hope that the house and Rajendra Kumar’s luck would rub off on him, but Kumar had already named his new house ‘Dimple’ and refused to allow Khanna to retain the name.
Khanna christened the house ‘Aashirwad’ and, to be on the safer side, performed a havan to ward off any leftover negative energy before moving in.
Once Khanna moved into Aashirwad, the façade of being a king was complete, with the garage of the house turned into a huge bar where Khanna held court. Khanna made tens of producers wait endlessly outside the fabled durbar, granting audience only once they had done time. He would emerge in his famous silk lungi–kurta and take his position at a chair that was conspicuously placed a little higher than the others to differentiate between the king and his subjects. Only a select few had access to the inner sanctum and many a times, those waiting outside would tell the ones who passed by to put in a good word. Johny Bakshi was one such person.
Bakshi had met Khanna on the sets of Do Raaste where he was a production controller and recalls how Khanna enjoyed being starry because he could get away with it. Bakshi remembers more than a handful of occasions when Khanna wouldn’t entertain a phone call from even someone like Shakti Samanta on the pretext of being ‘busy’, while in reality they would be sitting inside and gossiping. ‘He would say, “Keh do sahab busy hain … ek ghante mein phone karein” when he could easily take the call.’ Sometimes, Khanna would pick one person and make him the joker of the pack. Johny Bakshi ascribes this particular trait to Khanna’s attempt at emulating Raj Kapoor. ‘There were only two people in films whose feet Khanna touched – one was G.P.Sippy and other was Raj Kapoor – and like the showman, Khanna, too, would go for one person.’
Besides having fun at the expense of one particular person throughout the course of an evening, like Raj Kapoor, Khanna also liked the idea of flunkies, yes-men and chamchas hanging around. Shyam Keswani, a lawyer who came in contact with Khanna through Shakti Samanta, was one of the regulars and recalls how he’d see grim-looking producers sitting outside as if it were a government office.
Khanna’s rise even inspired chants such as ‘Upar Aka, Neeche Kaka’ (God in the heavens, Kaka on earth) that left little doubt about the hallowed position Khanna enjoyed. The unfortunate producers who had to conform to Khanna’s godlike status simply appealed to anyone who could enter the sanctum sanctorum to put in a kind word. Inside, copious amounts of whisky would flow endlessly through the night and most of those present would sing praises of King Kaka.
At times, Khanna would be mystified by his own success and seek approbation from all quarters. He would constantly look for people who could tell him that he was good and even deserved his success. He might not have taken his fame and popularity seriously enough, but took the adulation it brought a little too seriously. Those who didn’t agree with him or presented a somewhat contrarian point of view, even for the sake of argument, were often shown the door. The manner in which Khanna supposedly banished people from his court was nothing less than high theatrics; he would weigh the words that didn’t meet his approval and proclaim, ‘Aapko humara durbar chhodna padega’ (You’ll have to leave my court).
Night after night, the same saga continued and the mornings that followed would usually begin long after the sun was up. In an interview given in the early 1990s, Khanna himself recounted how reaching the sets on time was a challenging task. It is hard to imagine, but Khanna had reported late for the first day of shooting Raaz. Now that he was the brightest star on the horizon, it’d be laughable to expect punctuality from him. Ketan Anand believes that while Khanna never really troubled his father Chetan during Aakhri Khat, much was made of Khanna’s latecoming. He maintains that, barring a few stars, none reported on time, especially if it was a 9 a.m. shift, and perhaps Khanna was singled out because of his infamous all-night binges. Ashim Samanta doesn’t remember his father or any other senior filmmaker ever being a part of the durbar either.
However, much like Khanna’s renown, the stories of his drinking attained notoriety. But no one seemed to mind Khanna’s shenanigans as long as he delivered at the box office. He could be as late as he felt like, but once he was in front of the camera, everything seemed fine. He would never differentiate between producers, irrespective of the banner, and treated everyone equally. Many a times, he even forfeited pending dues in order to let his producers release their films.
If the activities within the confines of Aashirwad suggested the presence of a king, the throng of fans lined up along Carter Road in front of the house only validated the sovereign’s existence. Fan mail written in blood, chewing gum stuck to Khanna’s lips on pictures and posters for hours before being consumed, women marrying an absentee Khanna with his photographs doing the needful, and girls covering his white cars with red lipstick spoke of the level of adulation he enjoyed. On the other hand, men wanted to be like him and even started dressing up in the fabled ‘guru’ kurtas that Khanna popularized. Crafted by Baldev Pathak, who designed Khanna’s costumes till 1979, the guru kurta was a rage among not just men but also women. Pathak’s store Shrimaan Costumes would attract customers from as far as Calcutta and he once sold over 2,000 pieces after Khanna wore it. Much like the actor’s popularity turned his address on Carter Road into a tourist spot, Aashirwad also did more than needful to feed the legend of Rajesh Khanna.
Excerpted with permission from Dark Star The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna by Gautam Chintamani, Harper Collins India.
