SOCIETY & THE ARTSFILMSAugust 15, 1987
A star return
Vinod Khanna: The only hero who anyone dared compare with Amitabh Bachchan
Simran Bhargava in Bombay August 15, 1987 | UPDATED 15:50 IST
Vinod Khanna: Walking tallIt must have been dizzy up there. And lonely. For several years, Amitabh Bachchan has looked down from the heavens, the little heroes miles below him, specks struggling, striving to climb up. And the Bachchan smiled.
And then the winds began to blow from Oregon. Vinod Khanna reappeared in India in the cold mists of a November morning in 1985, driving his fallen god Bhagwan Rajneesh in a Mercedes to Delhi's Hyatt Regency Hotel. He was back, the only hero who anyone dared compare with the great one.
Would he stay, could he make it? He did and he did. With the super success of Khanna's freshly released films Insaaf and Satyamev Jayate, the strumpet industry is shaking with excitement. Vinod Khanna is back and Amitabh is no longer so sure of his place in the sun.
No one expected such a welcome, certainly not Khanna himself. The day Insaaf, his first film was released, he was driven by anxiety. "I was going from house to house to be with someone," he says. "I was confident that the film would do well but I didn't want to be somewhere where I'd feel insecure."
But the queues outside the booking counters had started building up with a fury that has not been seen in the last few years, tickets were being sold in black and when Vinod Khanna came on the screen after a six-year absence, the audience burst into hysterical applause. "Till now there was no one near Amitabh," said film magnate S.C. Nahata. "Now a parallel force is moving in."
Clearly, Khanna is a best seller. Both Insaaf and Satyamev jayate touched 100 per cent collections in the first few weeks over most of India and are still running strong. Industry estimates put returns from both at an impressive Rs.10 crore Tolu Bajaj.
Film distributor from Nizam, a conservative territory, reports: "I recovered 80 per cent of the cost of the films in the very first week alone." Outside Khanna's door the producers are queuing up. He has been inhaling offer after offer and today has over 20 films on hand with directors that range from Prakash Mehra to Gulzar to Muzzaffar Ali.
Manmohan Desai, an out and out Amitabh man, is keen to work with him. "There's a burning desire in Khanna to prove to himself that he is a good actor, not only a star."says Mahesh Bhatt, who is also directing him in two films. "That gives him the extra sparkle that he has today."
He is the hero most in demand right now. Every time you blink his pricehasjumpedbyRsSlakh. He is reported to have re-entered the market at Rs.12 lakh and two films later is said to be getting Rs.30 lakh - Rs.35 lakh a film, a figure second only to Bachchan's reported Rs.80 lakh.
Said film writer Salim Khan, who scripts most of Bachchan's films: "What's so amazing about Vinod is that when he left he was number two. And now he's walked straight back into that position again."
So, what makes him tick? His looks for one; physically, he has everything going for him. His face is all-male, rugged terrain that makes the younger stars of today look pretty and frivolous, like chewinggum heroes. "He looks so strong, so rugged and craggy," said a Delhi housewife.
"And yet, at the same time, he looks so gentle. His profile, it's so perfect it looks as if it's carved from rock." Anita Raaj. his co-star in Satyamev jayate, says: "He's a great looker. There's everything in that smile." And Shakti Kapoor who has acted with him in both his films compares Bachchan and Khanna: "They're like two gods. Two gods in two temples."
But Vinod Khanna the man is even more appealing than the star. He has a mystique around him, a man who's had a secret experience, returned as he is from Rajneesh's world of spiritual sex. There was always a reckless quality about him, the way he walked out of films when he was right there on the frontline with Bachchan. He simply gave it all up one morning.
"Death does things to people," said J.P. Dutta, film director and close friend of Khanna. "Money, success, fame look so futile when confronted with death." That was the time Khanna had lost his mother and a young niece. He put it simply: "I knew I could die the next moment, so I went to Bhagwan. To me, he is the ultimate in consciousness."
Vinod Khanna with Amitabh Bachchan: New challengeSix years later the show failed, the circus collapsed. The total disintegration of Rajneeshpuram with the accompanying media build-up snowballed the god of self-indulgence and his lavender cult into international headlines. Whenever anyone thought of Rajneesh.
Vinod was there by his side, slandered by all those stories of free sex, dazzling millions and easy nirvana. "It's his personal life that makes him so interesting. He has been through turmoil, agony. His god died. He's come back from Auschwitz," said Bhatt who is also a close friend.
"It was the same thing that made Rajiv Gandhi the darling of the masses as he stood above his mother's funeral pyre trying to come to grips with things." The experience has also made him emotionally rich. "It is my strength." says Khanna. "I draw from it."
If Khanna has come back from Auschwitz. Bachchan is going through it now.lt is almost as if the fates were controlling both their destinies. Khanna's rising film fortunes coincide with Bachchan's falling political ones.
Amitabh is still there, head and shoulders above everyone else but this is a different Amitabh, tainted by his politics, stalked by the deadly mysthenia gravis disease and unsure of how his films will do. His last release Aakhri Raasta flopped and the Delhi distributor is reported to have lost over Rs.20 lakh.
Still, there has never been a phenomenon like Amitabh Bachchan perhaps anywhere in the world, "lie is a bearer-cheque of a crore rupees under production,"said one film man while Salim Khan said: "He has a flair for everything: comedy, drama, tragedy, dialogue delivery and a fantastic screen presence. And he's a very disciplined man.
That's a rare combination. There is almost nothing I can say against him." He has crystallised his persona over the years into the funny, lonely, tough man, a versatile actor visible in all his shades in a Manmohan Desai or a Prakash Mehra film. "When you think of Vinod none of his films come back to you. the way they do with Amitabh." says Bhatt. He moves his hand and the world loves it.
Amitabh is still there, head and shoulders above everyone else, but even producers traditionally considered to belong to the Amitabh "camp" can feel the new challenger closing in.
No one wants to lose this god and most film people feel politics won't affect him as long as he can perform on the screen, a fate which will be decided by Shehenshah, his latest film which has been held up indefinitely.
But even producers traditionally considered from the Amitabh "camp" can feel the new challenger closing in. Amitabh has signed 11 films together, something he's never done in his professional career before. It's like film titan Prakash Mehra said: "Muhammad Ali thought he was the greatest. And then one day Joe Frazier came."
Khanna retains all the talent that once made him a threat to Bachchan. If anything, he has matured and has whetted his acting skills. "I think these six years he must have been performing somewhere in that camp, he is so good before the camera," said Raj Sippy, who directed him in Satyamev Jayate.
Khanna is at his best in the film, playing as he docs a bitter policeman, lonely, tough with a leashed impulse toward high-threshold violence. It is a difficult film with no visual backdrops that succeeds on a straight, hard-hitting performance by Khanna.
"Today Amitabh is at a peak." said Sippy. "You've given him those many years. Give Vinod those many years and he'll be at par if not above. The feedback the man is getting is unbelievable."
The Sippys got Khanna at his best. Insaaf, his first release, has traces of a man battling to return to normalcy, in certain scenes his eyes are not those of a sane man. And at other times, he is said to have got so emotionally involved in the film as in the scene where Dimple Kapadia dies that he had real tears in his eyes - and the camera was not even on him.
Khanna was a torn man during that period, changing everyday. At the start of the film he would sit quietly in a corner, get nervous if anyone saw him act, he'd wish everyone politely both when he came and when he left. It was a special, intimate time for the unit of Insaaf, the regeneration of Vinod Khanna.
By the nine months it took to complete the film, he was punching people on the back and flirting with his co-stars. "He was so normal we wondered what was wrong with him," said Mukul Anand the young director of the film.
Vinod Khanna with Dimple in Insaaf: Crowd-pullersAt one point, the unit almost lost Khanna to his Bhagwan again. That was the second time Rajneesh came back. For over a month, Khanna kept an expensive set - worth Rs.8 lakh - waiting.
He said he didn't want to act anymore, that they should get someone else. The film almost collapsed. "It took him almost a month to realise he wasn't going back to Rajneesh," said Anand.
But the real acceptance came only a few months later when the film industry went on strike. Khanna walked 14 km in amorcha from Shivaji Park to town. All along the way people cheered him mobbed him and hugged him. "That clinched it," said Anand. And Vinod Khanna knew he was back to stay.
He might have left the industry a villain but the sexy sanyasi is back as a hero. He's older, greying at the temples, but has all that sex appeal still packed in. "He gives me butterflies in my stomach the way no other actor can, it's his colour that is so attractive, it's a perfect sun-kissed brown.
He really is the only man who can look sexy even in a saffron robe," says Anita Mehta, 28, a young secretary and Keva Nath, 37, a housewife, says: "He looks so dependable. You want him to hold you to protect you. He's the kind of man you want your husband to be."
He has that rare all-in-all appeal that few other heroes have. Said Rajiv Mehra, who is directing him in Aakhri Adalat: "The girls like his looks, the guys find him tough. Older people like him because he's the saviour of the sister and the mother."
Yet this superstar who sees the world opening up at his feet, is ultimately a man alone, unattached. He has a broken marriage and a lost paradise behind him. Home is a room in a rundown club where he lives more like a schoolboy in a dorm, with red rexine chairs, a small cassette player by his bedside and packets of biscuits stacked in a corner.
A homeless millionaire waiting for his sons to come back from school so he can play badminton with them, a father who went through every contact in town to get his son just the BMX bike that he wanted for his birthday. So why does he continue to live here when he could stay in the ritziest hotel in town? He puts it simply: "It's because my kids live next door."
Still from Satyamev Jayate: Hard-hitting actThere is also a reckless generosity in his friendships with people. He charges an astronomical sum from his producers and then quietly gives money to his friends when they need it. Bhatt recalls a time when the wolves were at his door.
"He gave me money for buying a flat. He didn't want to humiliate me with monetary handouts so he took my younger brother as a secretary. He crosses the line in friendship." After Insaaf was completed, Khanna went up to the producer and asked him to cut all delayed production costs from his fee.
Shakti Kapoor remembers when he was new and alone in the industry, Khanna gave him a home to stay in for three years. "He's a great actor," says Raj Sippy. "But he's an even better person."
Today he is sadder and wiser. At 40, he's done more than a 100 films and been through emotional holocausts most people cannot even begin to fathom or comprehend. When compared to Bachchan, the most amazing answer comes from Khanna himself: "I don't want to be number one. I don't want to be that at all. I just want to live from moment to moment and do my work well."
Whatever he might say, Vinod Khanna has begun to move in the same direction as Amitabh Bachchan. The industry is now talking about two superstars ruling the firmament. It is as Bhatt puts it: "There is a need in people to make and break heroes. Number one is unfortunately a sitting duck. It is the number two guy who generates the excitement. There's going to be a pitched battle up there." And why not?
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