Superstar Friend Rajesh Khanna

Rajesh Khanna, the superstar. But for my family a good friend of my father, M S Krishna, editor of Blitz newspaper (for 30 years till the 1980s).  A friend,  who ensconced himself in rexin office kind chairs at our home,  in his white Kurta and red tomato colour cheeks, eating my mother’s idlis  (served in no classy crockery but stainless steel plates) are memories my family cherish.  And maybe not only our family.   My  neighbours of Patrakar colony too, who always had ready binoculars in their hand, trying hard to get all the action.  Rajesh Khanna and my father were great friends and drinking buddies. 

I remember as a teenager going to the many film parties my dad took us too  … Rajesh Khanna on seeing my father, would pull him to one corner,  oblivious of others who crowded around.   What did they chat so much about?  I now wish I had overheard their conversations instead of concentrating on the five-star buffet dinner and desserts laid out.

But what I cherish most is that their friendship did not end with my father’s exit from Blitz and from limelight journalism. Both met more than once a week as far as I remember till my father’s death in 1999.  Rajesh Khanna, was the only film star to visit my father,  who had undergone a surgery at  the Leelavati Hospital in 1998. He even told the well-known surgeon Nitu Mandke (who is no more) to give personal attention to my father. I guess because he thought nothing of being a film star where it concerned my father. And also because he had no qualms to just walk inside Leelavati at 11.30 pm in the night, all by himself, like any other casual visitor. The security guards and nurses outside the ICU gaped with astonishment and could not even utter a word of protest about him breaking ICU meeting timings and just watched the man walk gracefully and with his endearing smile into my father’s room. After 15 minutes of chat, my father told him to get out… and Rajesh Khanna immediately understood what my father meant – don’t waste your time here in the hospital, as my father used to tell us too. Rajesh Khanna laughed and left only to come again the next day.

Rajesh Khanna’s passing away to our family was a surge of memories of a superstar in his heydays and otherwise, who kept a close friendship always alive. 

Our entire family bids Adieu to the friend Rajesh Khanna.