My first memory of  Rajesh Khanna is the song, “Accha Toh Hum Chalte Hain (Aan Milo Sajna, 1970) and of me sighing exaggeratedly like he did in the song. And of listening to his songs from Mere Jeevan Sathi (1972) in an Assamese cantonment and trying to sing, “Mera Naam Hai Shabnam” (Kati Patang 1970) and then crying out aloud when my mother cut out his face from Filmfare to line a cake tin. And trying to watch Joru Ka Ghulam again and again for the scene where the monkeys enter  his kitchen and mess it up. Some of  these memories found their way in my book Perfect Eight. The fact is that there was a time when you did not have to be a certain age or a film buff to know who Rajesh Khanna was. He just was. And you knew. Decades before the age of stage managed PR stunts that attempt to turn one film wonders into superstars of the future, this was a success story of a boy who seemed to have been kissed by luck right from the time he was born.

***

We all know that he is the adopted son of an affluent family and was known to “struggle” in an Impala at a time when the likes of Amitabh Bachchan were living with friends like Mehmood in Mumbai so that they could knock on charmed doors without having to worry about a roof above their heads. He also won the 1965 All India Talent Contest organised by United Producers and Filmfare. I recently watched once again his first release, Chetan Anand’s Aakhri Khat (1966) and though the film was heart-breakingly poignant in its attempt to capture a lost baby’s travails in a self-absorbed Mumbai, it was Khanna who you remembered singing to a doe-eyed Indrani Mukherjee, “Aur Kuch Der Thaher..Aur Kuch Der Na Ja.” and then you suddenly understood  why for a decade or more, he had become box-office gold. He is possibly the first male actor who brought into romance, a tantalising sub-text of sensuality.

***

This was not the loose-lipped passion of Shammi Kapoor, the unexpressed intensity of Guru Dutt,the stylised longing of Dev Anand, the muscled showmanship of Dharmendra, the gentle poetry of Dilip Kumar, the playfulness of Shashi Kapoor or the occasionally brutish fervour of Raj Kapoor. This was something else. Somewhere through Raaz (1967), Baharon Ke Sapne (1967) and Ittefaq, Rajesh Khanna discovered himself. He channeled something that was as elusive as a whiff of musky perfume escaping from a bottle. It was an overture, a hint, an unspoken invitation towards something forbidden, dangerously seductive. Since the actors in that era were not allowed to kiss on screen, Rajesh Khanna lowered his gaze and blinked or nodded as if to make up for it. And his smile was almost a  weapon of mass seduction. It was a conspiratorial smile. Intimate and suggestive. Like a dialogue that only he and the woman before him could hear. And the world was never the same again.

***

No one in Hindi cinema  has been lusted and longed for as much as Rajesh Khanna. In a repressed country where passion was considered unholy and unrealistic, he was a flesh-and-blood fantasy longing for itself. He was the dashing pilot of Aradhana, the first love of Andaaz..someone a woman would consummate her longings fleetingly with and then pine over his loss forever. The playboy artist of Mere Jeevan Saathi ready to be reformed by a amber eyed, good woman. The eternally devoted lover of Amar Prem who looks at a supposed sex worker in a hell hole as she sings a Krishna bhajan and tears up because he has glimpsed her  soul and when she stops, he entreats, “Ruk Kyon Gayiin..Gayie Na.” He was the family rebel of Do Raaste who found time between domestic bickering to serenade Mumtaz with, “Yeh Reshmi Zulfein.” The silken kurta clad young nawab of Mehboob Ki Mehndi who romanced a ‘chilman‘ behind which Leena Chandavarkar melted away like a sugar cube in summer. He could not dance or grow violent convincingly but was a collective dream waiting to exhale.  A dream that film after film celebrated with glorious colours and music. He had great comic timing, a delicious musicality which paired with the voice of Kishore Kumar and the leading music directors of that time and cinemasmiths like Shakti Samanta contributed to his rise.

***

For women, he was both desire and wish fulfilment and his bungalow Aashirwad was a shrine that his fans would throng to catch a glimpse of him. Everyone knows the stories about the extent of his stardom. Women marrying his picture. Kissing his car. Writing letters in blood. And that story. That ironical story when a young, gawky Amitabh Bachchan could not get convincingly hysterical over the death scene in Anand that he was co starring with Khanna and was told, “Imagine that RAJESH KHANNA has died!” And Bachchan broke down and the scene went down in history as a subtle game changer.
***
Khanna in retrospect was a summer romance..that India loved and lived through over 15 golden jubilee hits. A time when Rajesh Khanna is supposed to have asked God for a flop because this extreme success was hard to sustain and endure. Little did he know. It would be wrong to say that he never strayed beyond the golden haze of romance. He was Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s muse in  sensitive, nuanced films like Bawarchi, Anand and also worked with the stubbornly experimental Basu Bhattacharya in Aavishkar where he convincingly played an ad executive straining against a suffocating marriage.  It would be cruel to outline what went wrong and why he became the poster boy of spent stardom. What changed? The signs were there for us to see in Namak Haram where rumour has it that he wanted the end changed to disallow Bachchan who was by now a talent to reckon with, to walk away with all the sympathy.
***
The water-tight script however belies such a possibility but it was a fact that Namak Haram was not Anand and Amitabh Bachchan was not the self-effacing Babu Moshai but an equal..someone who had the more charismatic role of an aristocrat caught between his conscience and his business interests. The film was in a way his story and about how he avenges a tragedy by punishing himself.
***
There was a parallel award instituted especially to honour Bachchan’s performance in the film but that alone could not have, should not have eroded what Khanna represented. But things were never the same again. It will also be in bad taste to speculate about his personal life and those details are out there for those who want to probe but the fact remains that the perfect romance he projected on screen did not permeate his life. Success that had come like a fever, left suddenly without explanation..and then there was only a shadow animated by familiar though a tad overworked mannerisms. The hits did not peter out totally. Despite the loss of that golden charisma and blurring of the angular lines of youth, there was the  preachy yet moving Avtaar and Sauten that worked. Cameos and laboured love stories followed but the superstar had left the building, the world had moved on.
***
How ironical that the rumours about his health reminded us of his existence as a real person amongst us even though his stardom has never really disappeared from our TV screens. His songs, his films continue to play in memory and he has appeared in assorted award shows and repeated the same poignant lines..again and again
‘Izzaten,ulfaten,shauraten,chaahten sabhi ko milti nahi,
aaj main hu kal koi aur tha……
yeh bhi ek daur hai,
woh bhi ek daur tha’…
(Acclaim, loyalty, fame, love..are not destined for everyone
today I am here..tomorrow there will be another
This is a moment in time
And then there will be another.)
We hope,  he gets better, and looks back with not a sense of loss but a sense of wonder. Because Rajesh Khanna’s  story despite the shadows and the lows was, is and always will be one of a kind. And because there will never be another.