Two years ago, for Indian cinema's centenary, I wrote a blog post highlighting what I thought were the defining films of each decade. Naturally, the post exposed some of the gaps in my outsider's knowledge of Hindi movies. For instance, of the 1970s I said, "This decade can almost be summed up in two words: Amitabh Bachchan." I should have known these would be fighting words. One commenter said he "winced just a bit" on reading this, for I had neglected the superstar who ruled the first half of that decade: Rajesh Khanna.
This critique of my oversight was wholly deserved. From 1969-1972, Rajesh Khanna had something like 17 consecutive solo hits, a record that remains untouched. Films like Namak Haram and Anand that starred both Khanna and Bachchan can be taken, in hindsight, as harbingers of things to come, or even as a kind of baton-passing. But in the first half of the 70s, Rajesh Khanna was alone the king of romance. And I knew this; I had read that his effect on young women of India was much the same as the Beatles' effect on young women of the west a decade before. Khanna is still often called India's original superstar.
Is it much of a puzzle, then, how I could have made such a blunder, to forget this great presence in my summary of the 70s? There is a simple enough explanation, if embarrassing to acknowledge: I was blinded by my own preferences. For much of the 10 years that I have been watching and studying Hindi films, I could not stand Rajesh Khanna. I found his froggy, heavy-lidded demeanor thoroughly unappealing. His mumbly delivery seemed slimy, not steamy. Often, he just appeared tired, as if his characters would rather be napping. I found his most beloved characters insufferably grating. I was, to put it mildly, not a fan.
Anand was the worst, combining a ferret-like, preternatural cheerfulness and pompously-recited platitudes with that unappealing droopy-lidded mien. In Amar Prem, as another character named Anand, Rajesh Khanna delivers more sleepy-eyed mumbling, lolling about philosophically while Pushpa tries to stifle her perfectly-justified tears for him. That Anand's cryptic pronouncements make him something of a sphinx — a squinting, drunken, pontificating sphinx. Even the delightful Bawarchi required a bit of steeling against that grinding smugness. But at least there, as an avatar of Krishna on earth, there is a reason for the self-satisfied, beatific air of the character.
For a time, nearly all I had seen of Khanna was those three films (plus Disco Dancer, which is a hoot — but no actor's tubby and toupeed twilight years will win him new fans). Then I watched Ashanti, another late-career film. I love nearly everything about Ashanti — but more despite Khanna than because of him. You can't but love a masala film in which Parveen Babi, Shabana Azmi, and Zeenat Aman all share the screen in Charlie's Angels-esque style, in which Mithun and Bob Christo have a shirtless fight scene, and Mithun and Parveen Babi have one of Hindi cinema's greatest drunk songs. Even Khanna's doughy, sanctimonious presence cannot compromise this joyride. And Khanna redeems himself in the climax, by removing his own prosthetic leg and beating his nemesis with it.