Had we not lost him in the year 2012, India’s first superstar Rajesh Khanna would have been seventy three on December 29. There have been several stars who shone in the sky of India’s film industry after him but none was as bright as him. His magic is timeless and will be felt by each new generation that views his films.
He evoked feelings that knew no bounds, especially among young girls who, it is said, wrote letters to him with their blood!
There has been no other star in the industry who saw such a meteoric rise within such a short span of time, delivering seventeen blockbuster hits from 1969 to 1973. People will remember forever this charismatic superstar with whose advent the word “superstar” came into use in our country.
It was with Aradhana in 1969 that this star was born overnight and became the heartthrob of the country. Before the screening of the film, nobody knew who he was. But once the film was seen people wanted to know all about this amazing actor. The craze he generated among people of all ages was unprecedented in the history of Indian cinema and has not been surpassed since.
When Rajesh Khanna, popularly called Kaka by his fans and colleagues, passed away in July 2012, it was indeed a sad day for the people of Dehradun and Mussoorie who have vivid memories of the actor when he shot for three of his films in Doon and Mussoorie -two of them in the seventies and one in the eighties. In fact, Rishikesh featured predominantly in his film “Karm.” Whenever he came to Doon or Mussoorie, he was at the peak of his career and people of the two towns exhibited the craze for him which was prevalent throughout the country.
The great actor’s interaction with students and staff of two of Mussoorie’s well-known schools namely Hampton Court and Wynberg Allen during the making of Karm in the seventies and Ghar ka Chirag in the eighties respectively endeared him to them. In Karm, the principal of the school was actress Sudha Shivpuri who later appeared as “Ba” in Ekta Kapoor’s soap titled “Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu thhi.”
There are a number of scenes in Karm which show us the lovely campus of Hampton Court School (CJM). The Mohkampur area of the Doon valley (the railway crossing) is also quite recognizable. A considerable part of the film has been shot in Rishikesh which appears pristine and serene in the film-as it must have been in the seventies.
Wynberg Allen School of Mussoorie, one of the oldest educational institutions in the region, appeared in Rajesh Khanna’s 1989 film Ghar Ka Chiraag which was based on the older film “Ek Phool, Do Maali” where Balraj Sahni plays the role which Khanna plays in Ghar Ka Chiraag.
Kaka’s film Kati Patang shows us Nainital in all its glory and at length. And for once, Nainital has been called Nainital and not by some other name! The song “Jis Gali Mein Tera Ghar na ho Baalma” has Kaka and Asha Parekh boating on the Nainital lake which looks absolutely beautiful in the film.
On this occasion, the Doon valley pays its respects to the superstar who would have been 72-year-old had he been alive today. Many stars have visited Doon and Mussoorie but the memories associated with this magnetic personality cannot be ever dimmed from the hearts of his diehard fans and admirers. For them nobody can be like Kaka.
In his book The loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna:Dark Star, Gautam Chintamani writes, “It is perhaps unimaginable to gauge the extent of Rajesh Khanna’s appeal today for the simple reason that every two-bit star who delivers a couple of hits is considered the next big thing. The madness of Khanna’s streak of success between 1969 and 1972 can be ascertained from the fact that he was the first Hindi actor whose films ran to full houses for months on end in non-Hindi speaking areas.”
In the prologue to this book, renowned actress Sharmila Tagore writes, “I don’t think there’s another actor who can make the same claim on posterity. More than four decades after Aradhana, and over thirty years after his last hit, the consensus is that there has never been and never will be anything to remotely match the appeal of this man at his peak.”