The third death anniversary of India’s first and only superstar Rajesh Khanna falls on July 18. The word superstar was born with him as far as the film industry is concerned. There had been famous actors before him but none of them could find a place in peoples’ hearts as he did. July 18 will always be a sad day for his admirers as it took away a lot of magic from cinema.
The consolation is that his films will always remain and posterity will see what an eternal charm he held and holds. He has indeed left a grand legacy for Indian cinema. His films have made him immortal and he will live in the hearts of people forever.
Giving 18 back-to-back hits after the grand success of Aradhana, he wrote an unforgettable chapter in the history of our cinema. The adoration and adulation that he received from the nation and people all around the world has never been experienced by any actor before or after him. He was a living legend and is now legendary
People of Dehradun and Mussoorie who have vivid memories of the actor as 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 Chiragi 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.” She passed away recently.
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 (railway crossing) is also quite recognisable. 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, one of the oldest 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.
Rajesh Khanna’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 Rajesh Khanna and Asha Parekh boating on the Nainital lake which looks absolutely heavenly in the film.
People of Doon and Mussoorie will always get nostalgic when they will watch the films of their favourite superstar showing their cities in the background.
His memories will linger on the in the hill station of Mussoorie and the valley of Doon. And in the hearts of all his fans and admirers all over the world. As the line in the famous film Anand says Anand Marte nahin. Stars like Rajesh Khanna never die, never fade.
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.”