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Veteran actor Mumtaz opened up about her streak of hits with the late Rajesh Khanna, who is often described as India’s first ‘superstar’. She said that his fans were jealous that she got to romance him, and would gather in large numbers outside his house. Mumtaz scoffed that she could just walk over to Rajesh’s bungalow, which was next door to hers. In an interview, she recalled that thousands of Rajesh’s fans would be stationed outside his house just to catch a glimpse of him. Legends of his fan-following have been shared by his contemporaries; the most famous incident involves his car being covered in lipstick because women kissed it.
But Rajesh’s downfall was just as drastic as his ascent up the Bollywood ladder. In the 1970s, after the arrival of Amitabh Bachchan, he found his stardom declining. He married the then-teenage Dimple Kapadia, but the relationship failed, with Dimple leaving him after a decade. In an interview with Filmibeat, Mumtaz recalled working with Rajesh at the peak of his stardom, and said, “We didn’t have a single flop, not even one. Distributors would buy our films just because Rajesh and I were in them. But it’s very sad that artistes are forgotten when their films start flopping,” she said.
Asked about his female fan-following, she continued, “When we’d shoot outdoors, they would make faces at me. They never liked me, they were jealous that I got to romance him. Women don’t like sharing. They were jealous. And it’s not like I had to work hard to catch a glimpse of him. We were neighbours. I used to look out of my window and see 10,000 women outside his house. I would think, ‘Baap re Kaka, yeh toh problem ho gayi hai‘. They would stand there, thousands of them.”
She said that Rajesh was very ‘sophisticated’, and was very ‘choosy’ about his partners. Rajesh was in a relationship with Anju Mahendru, but he dumped her abruptly and married Dimple Kapadia. Mumtaz, who remains close friends with Anju, said that she wasn’t too bothered when she learnt that Rajesh and Dimple had tied the knot. “She wished the best for him, and continued to till the end,” she said, adding that he could have married just about anyone he wanted.
Stories of Rajesh’s downfall have been discussed by everybody who knew him. In an old article, journalist Ali Peter John recalled an incident when Rajesh went unrecognised at the airport, and had to sit on his own luggage because nobody offered him a seat.
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