‘Look what happened to Rajesh Khanna’: Ketan Anand says father Chetan Anand refused to work with the actor after he became a star

“When he became a big hit, dad was not working with him. People used to come to him and say, ‘Aapka hero hai, aap uske saath kaam kyun nahi karte?’ (He is your hero, why don’t you work with him?) Dad said, ‘I don’t work with stars, I work with actors. Jab usko zaroorat padegi woh wapas aayega (When he needs me, he will come back).’”

Rajesh Khanna eventually reunited with Chetan Anand for the film Kudrat, which went on to receive widespread acclaim and remains celebrated as one of their finest collaborations.

Ketan Anand also shared how, later in his career, after experiencing both superstardom and the inevitable decline, Rajesh Khanna returned to work with Chetan Anand. “And he did come back towards the end of his career. They did a film together called Kudrat. What a beautiful film that was.”

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A lot has also been spoken about Rajesh Khanna’s faltering stardom, which coincided with the breakdown of his marriage to Dimple Kapadia, whom he married when she was very young. Years later, in an interview with Pritish Nandy, Dimple reflected, “I think we were two very different kinds of people. And I was probably very young to understand what was happening to this man who was a superstar. I mean, I have never been able to understand stars and their behaviour patterns at all because I am not one myself. It’s very difficult for me to, I couldn’t understand it. I just couldn’t understand it.” When asked if this period was “traumatic,” Dimple simply said, “Yes, it was.”

Rajesh Khanna himself spoke about his downfall years in a candid chat with Movie magazine. He recalled one instance when he came home drunk and said, “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 sakht imtihan na le ki hum tere wajood ko inkar kar de’ (God, don’t test my patience to such an extent that I question your very existence).” He continued, “Of course, Dimple and my staff came running, thinking that I had gone insane. It was because success hit me so much that I couldn’t take the failure.”