On the 13th death anniversary of India’s first superstar, Gautam Chintamani revisits the enigma of Rajesh Khanna and the timeless relevance of Dark Star, now in its third edition. Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri speaks with the author. 

Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna by Gautam Chintamani remains one of the most definitive biographies in Indian cinema. As the third edition releases on the 13th death anniversary of the iconic actor, this conversation between Chintamani and Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri offers rare insights into Rajesh Khanna’s rise, fall, and enduring cultural legacy. From his unparalleled superstardom to the complexities of fame and loneliness, the interview uncovers the motivations behind the book, explores hidden cinematic gems, and revisits the seismic shift in Bollywood that reshaped stardom forever.  

Rajesh Khanna wasn’t just a star—he was a cultural phenomenon. India’s original superstar, his arrival redefined the grammar of Hindi cinema, and his fall remains one of its most dramatic. Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna, first published in 2014, remains a benchmark in film biographies. As the book’s third edition is released by Rupa, eleven years after it first hit the stands—and on the 13th anniversary of Khanna’s passing—author Gautam Chintamani sits down with his editor and fellow film chronicler, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, for a candid, reflective, and deeply personal conversation.

From why the actor's cinematic presence eclipsed his personal life, to how films like Red Rose and Dhanwan deserve rediscovery, Chintamani dissects the man behind the myth with scholarly precision and emotional depth. As cinema, society, and storytelling evolve, Dark Star remains a haunting reminder of how stardom can both elevate and consume. This conversation is not just about Rajesh Khanna—but about the nature of fame, the fragility of identity, and why even today, Khanna continues to matter.

What initially drew you to Rajesh Khanna as the subject of a full-length biography, and why did you choose the theme of loneliness as a central thread? The title Dark Star is both evocative and melancholic. Can you explain what it signifies about Rajesh Khanna’s life and legacy?

I think it has often been said, but in this case, it truly was a book that chose itself. At the time, I was working on what would eventually become my second book, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak: The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema, when Rajesh Khanna fell seriously ill. There was an outpouring of emotion—people who had grown up watching him, people who had loved and, in some ways, worshipped him. It was during this period that the idea of a book on the leading men of Hindi cinema began to germinate in my mind, and Rajesh Khanna was always going to be an integral part of that narrative.

When Mr Khanna passed away, I wrote several pieces on him across print and electronic media. One of them took the song from Aap Ki Kasam—‘Zindagi ke safar mein’—as a kind of eerie portent of what was to come. Anand Bakshi’s words seemed almost prophetic in capturing the rise, the fall, and, dare I say, the darkness that would eventually engulf Khanna’s life. That piece resonated widely—it went what we now call ‘viral’. Anand Bakshi sahab’s son reached out to me, as did many people from the industry, all saying how true the piece rang.

That response planted the seed for a more focused biography, and about two years later, Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna finally hit the stands. You suggested the title to me; you were my editor at the time. You immediately understood that it captured both the allure and the melancholy of Khanna’s extraordinary life and legacy.

I’ve always felt that the element of darkness in the title is often misunderstood. Many of Mr Khanna’s fans—and he had, and still has, a legion of them—were upset at what they felt was a slight. But to me, the term ‘Dark Star’ denotes the birth, the brilliance, and the eventual fading of a celestial body. Rajesh Khanna was the star of stars. He shone so bright in such a short span of time that what followed inevitably felt like darkness by comparison.

You have resolutely kept the family out of the book – there is nothing on him from the family. Was that a conscious decision, and did it help or hinder the process of research and writing?

Starting this book after Rajesh Khanna’s death only underscores the irony that he, in many ways, became more relevant after he was gone. It also inevitably robbed the book of its most primary source of insight—that is, if he would have agreed to speak at all. But unlike certain artists—Sahir Ludhianvi, Dev Anand, or Guru Dutt—whose private selves are inseparable from their work, it is still entirely possible to discover Rajesh Khanna, the actor, without necessarily excavating every personal detail of the person.

That was, in fact, a conscious decision. This was always intended to be a book about the star and his times, rather than a conventional biography attempting to parse the private life behind the public persona. Partly, this was because the speed with which stardom arrived for Rajesh Khanna—and the haste with which it all unraveled—ensured that very little of Jatin Khanna, the man, remained intact. The star consumed the individual so completely that, over time, it became difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.

While researching and writing, I encountered as many people who revered him as those who viewed him with skepticism or even bitterness. I did reach out to Dimple Kapadia on a few occasions. Though she was gracious enough to entertain my calls, she ultimately chose not to speak. And in a way, I respected that decision. The stories of his generosity, his pettiness, his insecurities, and his outlandishness could easily have filled pages. But most people refused to say anything on record, and for every account there were always two counterarguments.

More importantly, I wanted this book to remain focused on Rajesh Khanna’s cinema—on what he represented to his audience and how he has been understood over the years. That is why, in many instances, I took the time to include synopses of films he appeared in, even when they weren’t the ones people remember him for. Because in those performances, you can glimpse a star grappling against his own fate, trying to reinvent himself—something his greatest rival, Amitabh Bachchan, managed with such élan and which ultimately eluded Khanna.

So, to answer directly: keeping the immediate family out of the book was a deliberate choice. It neither helped nor hindered the process so much as defined its scope. His nephew, sister-in-law and close associates before films, during his heydays and later too all spoke in detail. In the end, this was an effort to explore what made Rajesh Khanna who he was—and why, despite shining the brightest, he remained a dark star, eclipsed both by his own brilliance and by the luminaries who followed in his wake.

There’s often a fine line between public persona and private reality. How did you navigate separating the myth from the man during your research and writing process?

There’s always a fine line between public persona and private reality, and in Rajesh Khanna’s case, that line was especially blurred—sometimes by design, sometimes by circumstance. When I began working on this book thirteen years ago, it struck me that this was one of the first attempts to craft an in-depth biography of a matinee idol that balanced academic rigor with popular culture narrative. At the time, the industry itself didn’t always take its own work seriously, particularly what we often call ‘Bombay cinema’ or ‘Bollywood’.

Because I came to this as both a film historian and someone who had written screenplays, I felt equipped to look at his life and legacy from multiple vantage points. That combination helped me avoid simply celebrating the myth or reducing it to gossip. Someone once said that newspapers are the first draft of history, and I think that idea stayed with me throughout the process. I had been a witness to much of what eventually found its way into the book—whether in the way people spoke about Khanna, the collective memories they carried, or the way the industry itself evolved around him and then beyond him.

Navigating the separation between the myth and the man required a certain discipline. There were stories of his generosity, his narcissism, his brilliance, and his failings—sometimes all wrapped up in the same anecdote. For every person who described him as warm and loyal, there was another who saw him as difficult or aloof. The truth was often a composite of all those perceptions, and I tried not to judge.

In the end, I decided the most honest way to approach it was to focus on the work—on what his cinema tells us about who he was and what he represented. The speed with which stardom arrived for Rajesh Khanna and the haste with which it all fell apart ensured that the myth almost entirely subsumed the man. But perhaps that’s why he remains so compelling: because somewhere in that blurring of boundaries, he became something larger than life—and something more fragile.

You have made some interesting observations, like your reading of Red Rose, and what it says about his stardom, or how the sequence in one of his films echoed that of Deewaar, or that right up to the 1980s, he remained the highest paid star – these are aspects few people know about. Could you elaborate on some of these findings? Apart from the super-hit films that we all talk about when we mention him, are there hidden underrated gems that deserve a rediscovery? Which ones and why?

One of the things I’ve always found fascinating about any leading star—particularly in Hindi cinema—is that they are not only defined by the films they do but also by the ones they turn down. The biggest stars of every era are inevitably the first port of call for filmmakers with an ambitious script in hand. In Rajesh Khanna’s case, this becomes even more intriguing because so many stories began, were planned, or were imagined with him, even if they eventually found their way to someone else. 

Over the years, I’ve heard accounts—some credible, some speculative—of how films that became the calling cards for others were, at various stages, connected to Khanna. This rings especially true when you look at Deewaar and Don. There are scenes and sequences in Maha Chor that feel almost like prototypes for these later films. For instance, Maha Chor has a moment where Khanna’s character questions God, and the staging is strikingly like Yash Chopra’s iconic temple scene in Deewaar. Even more curious is a sequence where Khanna, locked up with Prem Chopra’s gang, picks on a fellow prisoner to assert himself—an idea you see reimagined a few years later when Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay nudges Shetty in the police van in Don.

These details reveal how fluid creative influences were at the time—and how the line between what a star rejected and what another actor made immortal is much blurrier than we often assume.

As for films that deserve rediscovery, Khanna’s filmography is filled with titles that reward a second look. Two personal favorites are Red Rose and Dhanwan. I’ve written about both in detail because they showcase aspects of his craft, we don’t usually associate with him. Dhanwan is a fascinating example. Most people wouldn’t immediately think of Khanna as an inspiration for the morally ambiguous antiheroes that Shah Rukh Khan played in Baazigar or Anjaam. But if you watch Khanna’s Vijay in Dhanwan—the entitled, cold-blooded rich man who believes money can buy everything—you see the contours of that character archetype. The film’s arc, where Vijay loses his eyesight and is forced to confront his own failings, feels decades ahead of its time. The transformation in the second half, especially when he receives an eye donation from the very man he despised, is surprisingly moving.

Similarly, Red Rose is a psychological thriller that allowed Khanna to explore darker shades. He wasn’t just the romantic superstar in those films; he was experimenting with characters that were flawed, conflicted, and sometimes unsettling. I’ve always believed that it’s these lesser-known films that truly reveal the range and ambition of Rajesh Khanna as an actor. They show a performer trying to push beyond the myth that had, in some ways, consumed the man.

 

How did the dynamics of Hindi cinema in the 1970s and ’80s contribute to both the making and unmaking of Rajesh Khanna’s stardom?

This is where the dynamics shifted decisively. Amitabh Bachchan’s arrival was not merely about a rival star eclipsing Khanna. It was about an entire narrative framework changing. Films stopped centering on romance and sacrifice and instead began to orbit around simmering rage, systemic corruption, and individual defiance. Bachchan was the perfect vehicle for that sentiment, just as Khanna had been for the era before.

The 1970s and ’80s were decades of tremendous churn in Hindi cinema, and Rajesh Khanna was, in many ways, both a beneficiary and a casualty of that upheaval. His rise was inseparable from the cultural moment he embodied—a time when audiences were drawn to romantic idealism, melodrama, and a kind of stardom that felt larger than life yet deeply personal.

When Khanna arrived, he offered something new: a gentler, more vulnerable masculinity that connected instantly with viewers. He wasn’t just the hero; he was the phenomenon. The hysteria that followed—women writing letters in blood, the processions outside his house—was unprecedented. But as the decade progressed, the audience’s appetite changed. The socio-political climate—unrest, disillusionment, and economic anxiety—created fertile ground for a different kind of hero: the ‘angry young man’.

Ultimately, Khanna’s making and unmaking were two sides of the same phenomenon. He came to symbolize a particular idea of the hero so completely that when the world around him shifted, he was left stranded—still luminous in his own way, but out of step with the times. That is part of what makes his story so poignant: the same forces that once elevated him to unimaginable heights also ensured that the fall, when it came, was swift and irreversible.

For the Rajesh Khanna hit machine to sustain itself, everything had to keep firing on all cylinders—the industry, the media, the fans, the filmmakers, and everything in between. It was a vast ecosystem that needed perfect alignment. And of course, it had to slow down eventually. But when compared to the glory days, that slowdown felt almost akin to death.

That he was unpunctual, rubbed people the wrong way, or made bad film choices after a point – those are rather lazy reckonings of his fall from stardom. What would you attribute such a rise and such a fall to?

It is often convenient to reduce Rajesh Khanna’s fall to simplistic reckonings—that he was unpunctual, that he rubbed people the wrong way, or that he made poor film choices. While there is some truth in each of these observations, none fully account for the scale of either his rise or his decline.

It is worth remembering that many stars of the time were chronically late to shoot—Shatrughan Sinha, for example, was famously unpunctual—but in Khanna’s case, everything was amplified. The success, the failure, and the reasons attributed to both were always larger than life.

The magnitude of his success and the severity of his decline were both phenomena—too complex to be explained by any single failing, and too consequential ever to be repeated in quite the same way.

If Rajesh Khanna were an actor today, do you think his brand of charisma and emotional appeal would still resonate with contemporary audiences? Or has his cinema dated?

I don’t think Rajesh Khanna would have enjoyed the same kind of success—or at least not the same magnitude—if he were an actor today. The parameters are simply too different. The ecosystem that made his superstardom possible—a time when there were fewer distractions, fewer competing idols, and a far more unified national imagination—no longer exists.

Unlike someone like Anil Kapoor, who seems able to fit into any era with remarkable ease, stars like Rajesh Khanna or Sridevi needed tailor-made scripts and specific vehicles that could justify and amplify their presence. That’s not to say they couldn’t shine in smaller or more modest roles—far from it. Look at Khanna in Aaina, Aakhir Kyon?, or Swarg. Even in those films, he could dominate the screen effortlessly. But today’s audiences engage with cinema differently. The pace is faster, the stories leaner, and the appetite for a certain kind of emotional excess that Khanna embodied has diminished.

While it’s easy to say his brand of charisma might not resonate as powerfully now, I admit—like any fan—I’m tempted to imagine a scenario where it might. Where an actor could still stand in a single spotlight, tilt his head just so, and deliver a line that would instantly enter the bloodstream of popular culture. Perhaps the real measure of his legacy is that even as times change, the allure of that image still lingers.

Looking back, what do you hope readers take away from Dark Star – not just about Rajesh Khanna, but about fame, identity, and the human condition?

I hope readers take away that fame is never a simple, linear story. It is seductive, transformative, and often deeply cruel. Rajesh Khanna’s life shows how a person can become so completely identified with an image that it eventually eclipses everything else including their own sense of self. 

More broadly, Dark Star is not just about one actor or even about Hindi cinema. It’s about how easily we project our dreams onto someone, and how quickly we can withdraw them. It’s about the fragility of identity when the entire world feels entitled to a piece of you.

At the same time, I also want to say that I wrote this book because I wanted to enjoy the process. Like Tarantino said, make the film you want to watch. In that spirit, I tried to write the book I wanted to read. And I feel blessed that so many people connected with it. The fact that, eleven years later, a new edition is being published says a lot—not just about Rajesh Khanna’s enduring legacy but about how stories like his continue to resonate. 

I feel fortunate to have contributed to that conversation and, in whatever small way, to offer a perspective on what it means to shine so brightly that you risk being consumed by your own light.