The Air Force officer is certain of his commitment to the woman and gets married to her secretly at a temple. In a charming sequence, Vandana and Arun meet for the first time - a scenario that has since ‘inspired’ several Hindi romances - at her house while he goes seeking her doctor father Gopal Tripathi (Pahari Sanyal). (It also features Sujit, considered the ‘lucky mascot’ of Khanna.) The Kishore Kumar playback, Khanna’s charm and, of course, his mannerisms serenade Vandana. In Darjeeling’s beautiful mountains, we meet Flight Lt Arun Verma, the Khanna we know today - with the signature head-tilt and hand movement.
And the film shows a (traditional) flashback about how she reached this point.Ĭut to one of the most loved Hindi songs of all time - ‘ Mere Sapno Ki Rani’.
It’s a gently paced film and a young Rajesh Khanna, paired with Indrani Mukherjee, already shows some of his magic that made the girls swoon.The film starts off with a trial scene, in an uncharacteristic non-linear sequence (written by Sachin Bhowmick), where Vandana is jailed for 14 years over murder charges. An unusual story of a child who goes missing in Bombay, it was shot by Chetan Anand in black and white, which gave it a retro feel even then. Though it was not the first film he was signed for, Aakhri Khat was released earlier. Here’s a compilation of some of his best numbers to remind us of a more innocent time when romance, not violence, was king. That the character he played died in many films only enhanced his appeal.Īnd the songs! He is associated with so many terrific songs, of love, of enjoyment, of sadness and of fun. Young women saw him as the perfect romancer, handsome but sensitive. He was the good looking boy whom Mum didn’t mind coming home (and secretly hoped her daughter would marry) – his persona was loving, not threatening, engaging, not aloof and most of all, genuine, not fake.
His crinkly eyed smile, the flick of his hand and the low purr of his voice, Kaka, as he was called by friends and fans alike, won the hearts of millions of young women and men. Fans kissed the tyres of his cars, sent letters to him in their own blood and some times “married him”, even if he did not know of the betrothal. Rajesh Khanna came at the fag end of the decade and continued till the mid-1970s, till a lanky star named Amitabh Bachchan, with his brooding looks and simmering anger, knocked him off his pedestal.īut in Khanna’s heyday, from 1969 to 1975, when every film he starred in was a guaranteed box office hit, the actor generated a kind of hysteria not seen before or since.
The 1960s were the decade of Eastmancolour romance in Hindi cinemas, full of bubble gum love stories set in locations like Kashmir, Nainital or, for the big budget filmmakers, Switzerland or Paris. But you can’t keep a superstar down for long – there is a revival of interest in him and the success of two books on him demonstrates that he continues to hold his fans in thrall. Towards the end of his career, Rajesh Khanna had almost totally disappeared from public view. This article was first published on Jand is being republished on December 29, 2018, Rajesh Khanna’s birth anniversary.