When Raaj Kumar placed his chair in the middle of a running stream to get away from pestering fans: ‘No one will come here for a photo’

Raaj Kumar, who was known for his unique dialogue delivery in the movies, was also known to be a person who enjoyed his quirky habits. The Tiranga actor enjoyed solitude and did not like it when many people crowded him. So even though he was a star in an age when fans actually walked up to their favourite celebrities and asked them for photos and autographs, the actor did not enjoy it much. Recently, action director Ravi Dewan, who worked with the actor in Subhash Ghai’s Saudagar, recalled that Raaj Kumar once placed his chair in the middle of a stream so people wouldn’t approach him for photos.

Dewan, in a chat with Bollywood Thikana, shared that when they were shooting for the film in Kullu Manali, a lot of honeymooning couples would walk up to the stars, Raaj Kumar and Dilip Kumar, and ask for photos. “One day, he took his chair and placed it in the middle of a stream. The water was till the knees and he sat on the chair there,” he recalled. When Ghai saw the actor sitting in the middle of a stream, he asked him for the reason for the same. To this, Raaj Kumar said, “Yahan photo kheenchne koi nahi aayega (No one will come here to click a photo).”

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Dilip Kumar, in his memoir, also spoke about Raaj Kumar sitting by himself when she shot for the film. He recalled an incident in Mahabaleshwar when Raaj Kumar placed his chair at the edge of a mountain which really concerned the crew. “One evening at Mahabaleshwar, the cameraman, his assistants and all the young spot boys were in a nervous flutter because Raaj was missing at the actual location and they had found him seated on a chair on the perilous edge of a cliff. If he took one step forward from the chair, it would have plunged him into the dark mysterious chasm below,” he recalled.

When the crew told Subhash about it, the director was told that Raaj Kumar was “seated on his chair with a faraway expression in his eyes that were fixed on the misty horizon.” Subhash and Dilip then walked up to him and the actor recalled, “We went up to him quietly and engaged him in a conversation, which distracted him from the hazy horizon he was staring at. Fortunately, he always responded to me in a friendly manner. So I managed to bring him back to the shooting location without much ado.”