Kanheen door jab din dhal jaaye..

Rajesh Khanna's idiosyncratic charisma had ceased to excite in the mid-70's. 18th July served to remind us of the Beatles-like madness never seen before or after  - that had swept thru urban India, not least, among the teens / youth of the softer gender.

Strangely enough though, Khanna was rarely associated with the other dominating theme of that time - the hippie life-style - maybe due to the scriptwriters lack of  empathy for such stories.
Rajesh Khanna  belonged to an ecosystem of several cinematic personalities -  the much talented RD Burman, the maverick genius - Kishore Kumar, Hrishda & Shakti Samanta, Sharmila Tagore, Mumtaz. - all of who seemed to have shared  creative symbiotic and artistic relationships that resulted in memorable tales & music around the  values that appealed to the middle class of that time - selflessness, sacrifice, simplicity - in the backdrop of the then socialistic, left-of-center political milieu.


What  made Khanna's magic fade away so quickly? Maybe, directors/producers got tired of Khanna's indiscipline. Maybe, viewers got tired of seeing the themes that Khanna portrayed repeatedly. Maybe, it was the Emergency or the rise in profile of the smuggling mafia, maybe the loud 'garibi hatao' campaign of the time.  all of which made being rich  or even, aspiring for upward mobility - almost a guilty proposition.
Or maybe, it was just coincidence that Amitabh Bachchan's 5 best movies  - Zanjeer, Deewar, Sholay, Amar Akbar Anthony and Muqqadar Ka Sikandar - just left no room for any other talent to be Numero Uno.
And Rajesh Khanna, unlike Bachchan, could never take the pragmatic approach of relegating himself to  the backdrop on the silver screen, leaving the foreground to the stalwarts of the day


Rajesh Khanna was a born and a natural superstar, a born Anand. And quite ironically, it is Bachchan who captures the essence that is Rajesh Khanna in the now immortal line Anand Mara Naheen, Anand Marte Naheen !

Remembering the Chotte Nawab - Why did RD Burman lose touch..

Jan 4th, this year, marks RD's  17th anniversary of leaving us behind. Of course, long before 1994, had the prodigy lost his electrifying touch that permeated magic much thru the late 60s and the 70s.How such an enormously talented musician could lose touch - with the masses and the classes- to the extent that RD did, is a bit of mystery.
Probably, had to do with changing audience tastes, probably the Jeetendra-Sridevi-Bappi-Thaa-thayaa music mode.Or maybe, he did not get the  right scrpts/films on whose successes his songs could have piggy-backed. Or was it that elements of the ecosystem in which RD thrived vanished one after the other - a faded Rajesh Khanna, a jaded Hrishi da or Shakti Samanta, maybe even a fading Ambitabh, departure of Kishore and Sanjeev Kumars from the scenes, and Gulzar's hibernation.
The popularity of the disco themes, the increasing usage of the synthetic electronic instruments may have been the last nails in the coffin.
Still, even when he was down -  no one ever doubted the musical genius of the man who began his independent musical career with Mehmood's Chotte Nawab comprising the endearing 'Ghar Aaja, Ghir Aaye Badra Sanwariya'. Arguably, the best film song in raag Malgunji (Anand's na jiya age na  by Salil C or Adalat's Unko ye shikaayat hai ke hum kuch naheen kehte by Madan Mohan compete closely) - a raga with conflicting emotions but made to appear deceptively simple by Pancham.
Liken this to a batsman scoring a double century on debut on a swinging green unprepared pitch facing the 4 Windies pacers of the '70s - and making it look easy.
Truly, Chotte Nawab!