The "Avtaar" of Rajesh Khanna

Raju Korti

Long before the 35-inch screen grappled to cope with his larger-than-life image and Jatin Khanna had shed his superficial skin to become Rajesh Khanna, I believed I knew the man well. But he never appealed to my limited aesthetic senses like he did to countless others as the quintessential romantic. Little did I imagine that there was much more to this man, who I recall in my college days, generated the kind of mass hysteria hitherto unseen in the annals of Indian cinema.
Having heard any number of stories about his airy flamboyance, casual and couldn't-care demeanour and rather intimidating presence, he was the unlikeliest of celebrities I would have chosen to bump into -- for professional or unprofessional reasons.
In fact, I took a sadistic delight in snubbing my friends who were his unabashed fans and worshipped him for whatever he did in the name of acting. At the height of one such moment -- when Khanna married the startlingly beautiful Dimple, who was almost half his age then -- I had wisecracked with an impudent and uncharitable headline "Pretty Dimple weds Popular Pimple", inviting more of frowns than chuckles from the other members of the newsroom.
Years later, I caught a glimpse of him at the Sun N Sand Hotel in Juhu, when he was still in his prime and attracting collective gasps from everyone within the vicinity. His disposition clearly betrayed an "I am the King of all that I survey" attitude with that characteristic nod of the head and eyes flickering somewhere between a blink and a wink.
It was only after he decided to contest the parliamentary elections that I decided to explore the man, who could have been a living example of all euphemisms. They called him reticent and reserved, but he could have been a snob, they called him blunt, but he could have been audacious and insolent. You could interpret Kaka Rajesh Khanna the way you looked at him.
I got to the point straight away. "You have had your grinding on Stage. Why did you allow yourself to become a slave of mannerisms and style?", I asked him. It was then I realised Kaka was quick on the uptake and that he saw through me fater than I could see through him. "Saaf kyon nahi kehte ke mere chamche mujhe ye sab seekhate hain", he replied with the same calculated calm of "I hate tears Pushpa". And then he let the words flow with the same tranquil : "I am Rajesh Khanna, the first and only superstar. Whatever I do defines acting."
To his credit, among the film personalities elected to Parliament, Kaka did much more than those of his ilk, but even in his new found avtaar, he remained self-styled and never ever lost the sight of the fact that he was and would be one of his kind. Through the small documentary of his life that he narrated to me with the precision a seasoned editor would be proud of, he laughed away all his travels and travails. It was difficult to believe that here was a man who had tasted heady success, held an unchallenged sway for two decades and wasn't able to come to grips with it. And if millions of his fans wanted him to be seen the way they wanted, who was even mighty Rajesh Khanna to refuse?
With Kaka, everything had to be brutally blunt. No hush hush affairs for him. He could obscure the line between real and reel simply because he was Rajesh Khanna on and off the screen. Now, even as I write this tribute-cum-obituary, I candidly admit my notions about him were pre-conceived. In hindsight, I felt rather than I saw in his eloquent eyes the sensitivity of an artiste and a generous human being.
I remember he told me the story of how he had cajoled the late Rajendra Kumar into selling his "Aashirwad" bungalow off Carter Road in Bandra when the latter had advised him against it, saying the place wasn't lucky. "I went ahead and bought the place. It is in this huge bungalow that my isolated heart has thudded for so many years."
Of course, Kaka hit the bottle hard in those years of self-imposed exile when everyone else distanced from him. But he didn't stoop to conquer. No ribbon cuts, no inaugurations and no rent-dancing at weddings. Not even desperation advertisements for survival even when the taxman came repeatedly knocking. And look at the supreme irony and stark message of the one and only advertisement that he did. Calculated to promote a fan, it instead stirred back to life, the memories of a hero, who made it clear to all Babumoshais that no none could snatch his fans away from him.
It could only be Rajesh Khanna's privilege to articulate:
Zindagi ko bahot pyaar hamne diya
Maut se bhi mohobbat nibhaayenge ham.

Many Measures, No Confidence!

Customary shake, usual bake!

Raju Korti

Looked from any angle, Pakistan is a nation with the proverbial two sides of a coin. The Head is set face to face with India and the Tail invariably or variably – depending on political expediencies and the mood of its hardliner Army – facing the United States of America. That, of course, is peripheral to the issue in discussion.
The immediate trigger for this blog is yet another foreign secretary-level talks have gone through diplomatic charades and consigned  to the inconclusive and senseless dustbin of the turbulent history of the two nations constantly at each others’ throats. The diplomatic tenacity between the two countries has meandered through a series of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) that have done precious little to reduce fear of attack by both (or more) parties in a situation of tension with or without physical conflict.
History tells us that CBMs emerged from attempts by the Cold War superpowers and their military alliances -- the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact -- to avoid nuclear war by accident or miscalculation. In the Indo-Pak context, the CBMs haven’t had much of a connotation.
Among the scores of exchanges India has had with Pakistan, the closest one to have fructified was the Agra Summit in 2001 where, eventually, both the sides had veered round to the fact that Kashmir was the core dispute. But as it turned out, the wily Musharraf, who almost talked himself into an Indo-Pak extradition treaty during the course of the summit, left in huff and puff after Advani queered the pitch by throwing in the Dawood Ibrahim issue. I recall having seen on TV Musharraf turn red before coming out with “Advaniji yeh bahot chhota tactic ho gaya”.
Musharraf, who was yet to arrogate to himself the status of a CEO then, made a very pertinent suggestion on how the issue could be approached by eliminating irritants and zeroing in on the options that could be taken forward. It made a lot of political sense but India’s PR was a disaster and what could have otherwise ended as a watershed development in the chequered history between the two countries, reverted to status quo.
It is against this backdrop that the latest nuclear confidence-building measures have to be viewed as a stabilising force for enhanced security, and safety of nuclear facilities. The Track II process might be touted as “some success”, but in the endgame, its validity remains questioned.
An impressive range of CBMs – both military and non military – in the two decades have been overtaken by a Kargil in 1999, the massive mobilization of troops in 2002, and not to speak of the relentless terror unleashed from the Pakistani soil.
The air, road and railway linkages, the hotlines between the two countries have more or less come a cropper. The hotlines have been hardly used when required most and when matters came to the boil, it was saber rattling all the way what with the two countries staring at the horrific prospect of a nuclear war. The border crossings and trade has been almost next to nothing. There has been a specious argument in favour of a disproportionate emphasis on military CBMs with non-military CBMs not getting due appreciation.
Many CBMs originally crafted to address the stabilization between the two countries post the nuclear tests of 1998 remain only in the realms of “acceptance in principle”. The fact is they will remain so unless dominant issues mentioned in the composite dialogue are resolved. Obviously, it is a case of cart being pit before the horse. While CBMs do have the potential to create trust between two nations, trust is also called for in the very inception stage. One feeds off the other, and in the current scenario, when political will in both states appears to be waxing and waning intermittently, CBMs which are difficult to establish but easy to disrupt, have not been fully effective. There is a lack of verifiability in many CBMs which leads both countries to fall victims to mistrust, suspicion and misinformation on a variety of issues.
CBMs have been particularly ineffective, if not absent, during the times of conflict because despite declarations to that effect, neither country has moved beyond the point of “conflict avoidance”. Recall that the ceasefire effected in 2003 was violated by Pakistan in 2008. Worse still, government on both sides often deploy CBMs as a political tool to win over their respective constituencies which can be very damaging in the longer run.
Post-Abbottabad, it is not only anti-American sentiments that run deep in Pakistan: India, to many Pakistanis, is still perceived to be a greater threat to Pakistan than Al Qaeda or the Taliban, clouding the atmosphere for the civilian government's talks with India.
The CBMs have so far been a case of a cart being put before the horse. No way can the talks gallop until the core issue is addressed. And all said and done, it never will be.     

Two rounds of bout with Dara Singh

Raju Korti

For a generation that is hooked on the likes of Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Shah Rukh Khan as the ultimate emblems of masculinity, Dara Singh may probably just be the mythological character of Hanuman that he essayed in his later years in long-drawn sagas like Ramayan and Mahabharat. But ask those who were privileged to see this hunk in his prime and they will assert that the man who juggled the role of a wrestler and a celluloid action hero with so much aplomb, was a hunk in true sense of the word.

In the sixties, Dara Singh held out a constituency of his own. His six feet two frame had the kind of rippling muscles that would make look Salman's pale as fragile arteries in comparison. But there was much more to the born wrestler that he was. Under those steely shoulders, he had a heart softer than butter. The face may have looked like it was carved out of hard granite and the rolled up sleeves capable enough to make sobriquets like "Rustom-E-Hind" and "Hind Kesri" sit pretty on them. On the one side there were hoards of baby-faced chocolate heroes and at the other there was Dara Singh. He was truly a class and breed apart.

I had always thought of him as a B and C grade hero in the Wham-Bang-Thanks-Mam genre films where he would make short work of his on-screen rivals with the same ease that he did in the wrestling bouts. In the fleeting minutes between the action, he would turn a hopeless romantic and find time to fool around with Mumtaz and Nishi, his accredited heroines. Remember, those were the times when Mumtaz was just a glam doll used to fill up reels left over after Dara Singh's encounters with his villains. Mumtaz was persevering and lucky enough a decade later to fall into the arms of the country's first superstar Rajesh Khanna while Dara Singh had lapsed into friendly mythological roles of Hanuman in soaps and films. It seemed there was no one better than him in the country of billions to play the role.

But my two meetings with Dara Singh exposed me to a totally different persona of the man. I found him to be a complete anti-thesis of the rugged, raw, virile mass of flesh that I had seen fill the screen. Dressed in the conventional Punjabi attire and seated alongside his illustrious brother-actor-wrestler Randhawa, the first thing that struck me was his incandescent smile and warm disposition. His massive 130 kg body construct was every inch affectionate and affable. And though he hugged hard enough for me to feel that he had fractured some of my ribs, I couldn't mistake the warmth he exuded. It was a gesture that reminded me of a beautiful Rafi solo from his 1963 film (aptly titled) "Faulad".
"Dil hai hamara phool se naazuk, bazoo hai faulad
Toofano mein palnewaale, rehte hai Azaad"

It took a huge matka (pot) of Malai Lassi -- which he gulped down in one swig -- and some nostalgic memories that no one probably ever shared with him, to get him to rewind. His chest, already big enough to embrace two of my kind, swelled with further pride while narrating how he remained unconquered in all the 500-plus wrestling bouts that he fought. Some of them with traditional rival King Kong had become legendary and stuff folklore are made of. Yet, ironically, one of the films that he was the hero in was titled "King Kong".

Dara Singh never tired of reeling out how he maintained his physique, his grueling exercise schedules and his extraordinary and gluttonous intake. Without having to reel out those incredible details, I can tell you, most of us don't have the tummy for eating that kind of food for weeks. But then, he was Dara Singh, no less.

Dara Singh told me he was born to fight. "At an age when toddlers try to take baby steps, I was breaking things around me with my brute strength. So I was channelized into conventional pehlwaani where I could display my strength in all its rippling glory." That was the beginning of a distinguished and blemish-less career  that spanned over five decades. He was born to conquer. Rather the word "defeat" didn't exist in his lexicon.

Dara Singh never had to act or emote with his eyes and stuff like that. He let his bulging biceps do all the talking. Who would want a macho to play a tear-jerker? In that long sitting, Dara Singh gave a spell-bonding account of most bouts -- both with his rivals in the real and the ones on the screen. It had all the trappings of an international bestseller.

When the time came for me to take his permission, he raised his genially giant frame from the chair to embrace me once again, But this time I was prepared. I just extended my hand to shake with his. For the next few weeks, I was applying pain balm to soothe my aching palm. On hindsight I should have folded hands with a "Namaste".