The late superstar Rajesh Khanna experienced unmatched highs, but also witnessed terrible lows in his career. After ruling the roost in the 1970s, the arrival of Amitabh Bachchan and the continuous box office failure of his movies sent him spiralling. In a chat with his greatest rival, years after they'd both seen their stars fade, they discussed how fame impacted them as people, but also how they dealt with failure. The interview was published in a 1990 issue of Movie magazine. Khanna spoke about his first brush with fame, and admitted that it changed him massively. He also recalled a particularly dark night of the soul, which left his wife, Dimple Kapadia, thinking that he'd gone insane. "I still remember the exact moment when for the first time I became aware of how mind-blowing super-success can be. It psyches you totally - or you're not human. It was just alter Andaaz, at a lottery draw held at the Vidhan Sabha in Bangalore," he said. He continued, "One couldn't see anything but heads bobbing down the whole road, which was not only broad but almost ten miles long. And there was just one echo of the voices - 'Haaaaa.' You know, it was like a stadium in the times of the Romans. I wept like a baby." Also read - Twinkle Khanna asked dad Rajesh Khanna why he had barred Dimple Kapadia from working after marriage: ‘Wanted mother for my children’ Khanna said that he is very 'surprised' that that success and failure didn't impact Amitabh as greatly as it did him. "Because later, when I started dipping, I hit the bottle. I mean, I am not a super human being. You are not Jesus Christ and I am not Mahatma Gandhi. I remember that once at three o'clock in the morning I was pretty high on spirits and suddenly it was too much for me to stomach because it was my first taste of failure. One after another, seven films had just flopped in a row. It was raining, pitch-dark and up there alone on my terrace, I lost control. I yelled out. Parvardigar, hum garibon ka itna sakt intihaan na Ie ki hum tere vajood ko inkar kar de,' (Don't test my patience to such an extent that I question your very existence)." He said that he couldn't 'take the failure' only because he was so greatly affected by his success. "Of course, Dimple and my staff came running, thinking that I had gone insane," he said. Dimple witnessed his decline first-hand. She said in an interview with India Today in 1985, a few years after she walked out of the marriage with their daughters, "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.”
