There was a time when Rajesh Khanna was not just a star but a mass emotion. Fans waited outside his house for hours, wrote letters in truckloads, and named their children after him.
In the early 1970s, his success bordered on the unbelievable. A string of consecutive hits turned him into Hindi cinema’s first certified superstar, a position so dominant that it seemed untouchable. But stardom has a short memory, and Rajesh Khanna’s fall was as public and painful as his rise was spectacular.
The shift began around 1973, when Amitabh Bachchan exploded onto the scene with Zanjeer. That same year, both actors appeared in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Namak Haraam, a film that quietly marked a generational change.
Rajesh Khanna still delivered hits like Aap Ki Kasam and Roti, but the magical streak that once defined him had ended. By the time Sholay and Deewaar reshaped the box office in 1975, the industry had found a new kind of hero, and Rajesh Khanna suddenly seemed out of step.
People around him noticed early warning signs. Sharmila Tagore once remarked, “Kaka either couldn’t or didn’t reinvent himself to remain contemporary, so much so that he became almost a caricature of himself and people began to mock him.”
Directors who had once built films around his charm found him increasingly difficult to manage.
Alleged Late-night drinking, unpredictable moods, and superstar tantrums made collaboration harder.
Even Yash Chopra, who had launched his banner with Rajesh Khanna’s backing, eventually stepped away.
The 1980s were especially unforgiving. His marriage to Dimple Kapadia was collapsing, his films were failing, and the adulation that once defined his life had thinned.
In a 1985 interview, Dimple Kapadia described the situation bluntly: “When a successful man goes to pieces, his frustration engulfs the entire surroundings. It was a pathetic sight when Rajesh waited at the end of the week for collection figures but the people didn’t have the guts to come and tell him.”
Then came Avtaar in 1983, a film that offered a brief, almost redemptive pause. Playing an ageing man dealing with ungrateful children, Rajesh Khanna surprised everyone.
To shoot the bhajan “Chalo Bulava Aaya Hai,” he walked barefoot to the Vaishno Devi temple and lived like the crew, sleeping on floors and sharing basic facilities. Actress Shabana Azmi later recalled how humbling that phase was.
During a Radio Nasha conversation, Shabana Azmi shared an anecdote that stripped superstardom of its glamour. There were no vanity vans or private toilets on location, only public restrooms. Even Rajesh Khanna had to stand in line, holding his dabba. “At that point in time, Rajesh Khanna couldn’t be like ‘I am a superstar’,” she said.
Yet, old patterns lingered. His marriage ended during Souten.
In Yasser Usman’s book Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India’s First Superstar, Rajesh Khanna admitted, “I know over the past few years the lean patch in my career was attributed to my bad acting or bad habits… But I did nothing like that. What has actually changed is that over the last year I have been happy in my personal life.”
He tried everything after that: film production, politics, television. Some ventures brought brief attention, none restored his lost stature. Actor Sachin Pilgaonkar summed it up years later: “Our industry functions on image. If the image is bad, it is very difficult to change it… Unka naam kharab ho gaya tha.”
Rajesh Khanna passed away in 2012 at 69. He lived a few years as a phenomenon and decades grappling with its aftershocks.
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