When Sharmila Tagore was relieved to stop working with Rajesh Khanna, said he ‘didn’t reinvent himself’: ‘People began to mock him’

Because of this, Sharmila made the decision of working with other actors “despite the fact that our pairing had been so successful.” Calling this separation a “huge relief”, she wrote, “Probably even Kaka felt it was not such a good idea to have so many films with one actress – one runs the risk of becoming stale. Whatever it was, we found ourselves working together in less and less films. And I must confess it was a huge relief.”

Rajesh Khanna appeared in 15 consecutive hits between 1969 and 1971 but his films in the later years were not as successful. Like many of his contemporaries, he too was a hit-or-miss actor now and the pedestal he was once placed on was pulled down.

Sharmila also wrote that the “craze” for Kaka, as he was fondly called, ended as abruptly as it had begun. The Kashmir Ki Kali actor wrote that “it left a scarred Kaka in its wake.” She mentioned that the Bawarchi star “didn’t nurture his stardom and allowed it to slip from his grasp.” Talking about how he was stuck in his ways, she wrote, “He failed to notice that the audience was changing, and that the roles he had been doing were becoming less and less relevant. Kaka either couldn’t or didn’t reinvent himself to remain contemporary, so much so that he became almost a caricature of himself and people began to mock him.”

Rajesh Khanna passed away in 2012 at the age of 69.