Vinod Khanna: The other angry man

Khanna's acting career spanned nearly five decades and over 100 films

As a child, whenever I would see Vinod Khanna on screen, I would half-expect Amitabh Bachchan or Shashi Kapoor to appear alongside as well. To my mind, he was the perfect foil to these actors, “the other” in their films. 

For a very long time, Amar Akbar Anthony stood for me as the perfect representation of Khanna’s career. In this rollicking comedy, directed by Manmohan Desai, he was the subtle, understated counter to the madcap characters played by Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor. And then suddenly, just when you were about to dismiss him as bland or boring, he lit up the screen with his trademark snarl, beating Bachchan’s Anthony black and blue. For several years, I happily lived with this image, till I came across Gulzar’s 1971 film, Mere Apne, on Doordarshan late at night, in which he starred with Meena Kumari and Shatrughan Sinha. 

The film was hailed as being well ahead of its time, with Sinha and Khanna playing unemployed, misguided youth who end up sharing details of their disillusioned lives with Anandi, essayed by Meena Kumari. There was a rawness and intensity that Khanna brought to the screen. He was the very soul of the film. Mere Apne, followed by Achanak in 1973, again by Gulzar and based on the famous Nanavati case, brought him further critical acclaim, making people look beyond his drop-dead good looks. 

According to film critic and writer Mayank Shekhar, Khanna’s life can be perfectly summed up as a series of transitions. “He moved on from doing relatively insignificant parts in insignificant films to minor roles in significant films (Aan Milo Sajna, Purab aur Paschim), and then to becoming the antihero, till Achanak made him a sensation,” he says. 

For a very long time, Khanna starred in several multi-hero films, 47 to be precise, such as Ek Aur Ek Gyarah with Shashi Kapoor and Ek Hasina Do Diwane with Jeetendra. With Bachchan, he teamed up in a whole host of blockbusters: Hera Pheri, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Khoon Pasina and, of course, Amar Akbar Anthony. And yet, he didn’t bow down to playing second fiddle. 

“Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra and Bachchan, whenever he sparred with them, Khanna was more than an equal, stealing scenes right away from Bachchan, especially in Khoon Pasina,” wrote filmmaker and author Khalid Mohamed recently. “The fact is that he was the ‘other angry man’ and not THE angry young man. That was the reign of Amitabh Bachchan,” says Shekhar. “Even then there was no denying Khanna’s fandom. He was seen as the epitome of the handsome man.” 

And just when he was at the top, he quit it all to move to Oregon to set up Rajneeshpuram for spiritual leader Rajneesh Osho. It was the “search for the truth,” as he said, which took him to Osho and later in life turned him to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. “He was someone who believed in the old idea of the guru or margdarshak, someone who could help him see the light,” says Shekhar. 

The industry had almost given up on him when Khanna made a comeback in 1987 and climbed back to the top. One of the films that he signed on his return was Muzaffar Ali’s Zooni, alongside Dimple Kapadia, which remains unreleased. To Ali, Khanna as the “Prince of Kashmir” was perfectly cast. “The film was a bilingual — in English and Hindi. Khanna could remember page after page of dialogues in English without any prompting. He could have been a grand English actor,” recalls Ali. 

Barely half the schedule of Zooni had been completed when insurgency broke out in the Valley and the film had to be abandoned. However, Khanna’s humane and sensitive side left an impression on Ali. “The likes of him are rare. When the film was held up, he would discuss how to bring it back. He was very open and amenable to people, to crowds. He had his aura, but he didn’t behave like a star on the set,” he says.

It is Khanna’s humane side that producer-director Raj N Sippy remembers as well. “I always called him Vinoo. He was my buddy,” says Sippy, whose association with Khanna goes back to the 1970s when he was an assistant to Gulzar on Mere Apne. Sippy then went on to work with Khanna in his debut directorial Inkaar, and in films such as Satyamev Jayate and Mahaadev.

“My father, who was the producer of Inkaar, called him to office to discuss the remuneration. He wrote a figure down and passed the note on to Khanna who scribbled something back,” reminisces Sippy. When his father saw the note, he realised that Khanna had reduced the offered amount. “That was the kind of respect and love that Khanna had for my father. Moments like these don’t happen anymore. It was my debut directorial, he could have asked for more. But he asked for less.”

An article by journalist Nandini Ramnath sums up Khanna’s career in one question: What if? “What if his potential had been spotted early and he hadn’t slaved away in low-budget films as a bit-part actor? What if he hadn’t chucked away his stardom at the height of his career for a spiritual quest? How would the cinema of the 1970s and ’80s have been if Khanna had been an early riser than a latecomer?” she asks. 

Veteran actor Mohan Agashe, who worked with Khanna in Rihaee, adds one more question to the list: what if Khanna had veered towards parallel cinema, instead of doing some rather forgettable commercial films. “There is no doubt that he was the kind of hero that mainstream cinema looks for: tall and handsome. But he could have been really good in art-house cinema. By temperament, he was suited to the genre: he was a thinking guy, intelligent, wasn’t superficial and was very serious about what he did.” 

Gulzar, to an extent, brought out this side of his that mainstream cinema wasn’t able to tap to the fullest. “Some of his most memorable performances, from an artistic point of view, were shaped by Gulzar saab,” says Shekhar. 

Khanna also had a tryst with politics, and was a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Here, he didn’t cover himself with glory — people will remember him as the man who promised to transform Gurdaspur in Punjab into Paris, if elected.

Agashe, who got to know of Khanna’s battle with cancer only two weeks ago, says, “I would like to retain the image of him from Mere Apne in my memory.”

Vinod Khanna