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
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