This story is from April 28, 2017

Vinod Khanna: The man who turned his back on stardom

Vinod Khanna, who passed away in Mumbai on Wednesday, was headed for superstardom before he heeded another, more spiritual call.
Vinod Khanna: The man who turned his back on stardom
Vinod Khanna: The man who turned his back on stardom
Vinod Khanna, who passed away in Mumbai on Thursday, was headed for superstardom before he heeded another, more spiritual call. His pairing with Bachchan was a distributor's dream come true. Even those who sold cinema tickets in black in India's dingy bylanes felt the same. The duo ensured serpentine queues before the counters for weeks, for films like Parvarish, Khoon Pasina, Hera Pheri and Muqaddar Ka Sikander.
Two other major winners in his resume, sans Bachchan, were Raj Khosla's Main Tulsi Tere Angan Ki and Feroz Khan's Qurbani. Incidentally, Khan also passed away on April 27, eight years ago.
Khanna wasn't content doing formula commercials. He had a penchant for the offbeat-- Gulzar's Achanak, Madan Sinha's Imtihan, Aruna-Vikas's Shaque and Aruna Raje's Rihaee, to name a few. Many enjoyed watching him as the cop probing a kidnapping in Raj Sippy's Inkaar, inspired by Akira Kurosawa's High and Low.
As a young actor, he played villainish roles in superhits such as Rajesh Khanna's Aan Milo Sajna. His best performance then came in Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) in which he played Jabbar, a vicious dacoit who terrorises Chambal.
The transition from bad guy to good guy was gradual. In Gulzar's Mere Apne (1971), Khanna was leader of a bunch of wayward, unemployed youth typifying the angst-ridden political and social landscape of India in early 1970s.
The same year he had the opportunity to play a solo hero in Hum Tum Aur Woh in which he also sang the superhit Sanskritised song, `Priya praneshwari'. By 1973, he had made the transition to action hero although the flops outnumbered hits such as Kachche Dhaage.
It was in the multistarrer Uma Kadam that he found his métier. But Khanna shocked tinsel world by forsaking it all to join Rajneesh's ashram in Pune in the early 1980s. He became one of his closest disciples.

Just when Bollywood had given up on Khanna, he returned in 1987 with Satyamev Jayate and Insaaf, both moderately successful films. He was good as a mafia boss in Dayavan, inspired allegedly by real-life don Varadarajan Mudaliar, though many insisted that Kamal Haasan was better in the Tamil original, Nayakan. Towards the later part of his career, he took up character ro les. One of the memorable ones was of Prajapati Pandey , Salman Khan's father in Da bangg (2010). The tension between the two was one of the film's more nuanced tracks that got drow ned in the knuckle crunching action.
Khanna see med to find work life balance after joi ning BJP . He was asked to con test Lok Sabha polls in1998 from Gurdaspur, then a Congress ci tadel. He made it his own. Khan na also loved cricket and sel dom missed watching a Test match in his younger days. For charity games, he was dressed in impeccable cricket overalls.“The public may think I am just another filmstar, but there wa atime when I played fair cricke with (Test player) Budhi Kun deran. Later I played with Ek nath Solkar at the Hindu Gym. used to bat at no. 4 but settled for films the moment I realised I couldn't be a Vishwanath! Even so cricket, not films, is my first love,“ he wrote in The Illustrated Weekly of India in 1979.
Actor, seeker, politician and avid cricket lover- Khanna journeyed through life with the same abandon that he landed blows on bad guys. Until felled by the Big C, he lived life to the brim like few Bollywood stars have. He deserves a compelling biography.
Veterans bid Vinod goodbye
Amitabh Bachchan, Subhash Ghai, Gulzar and Kabir Bedi were among those present as the last rites were performed. His youngest son Sakshi (seen in pic) led the ceremonies.Elder sons Rahul and Akshaye stood beside him Khanna is survived by former wife Geetanjali and sons Akshaye and Rahul, and present wife Kavita (seen in pic) and their son Sakshi, daughter Shraddha and brother Pramod.
70'S MATINEE IDOL DONNED MANY HATS
POLITICAL AVATAR
Gurdaspur MP, winning the seat 4 times, before losing in 2009. Inducted into Union cabinet as culture minister by then PM Vajpayee in July 2002. Vajpayee later moved him to external affairs ministry as MoS
OTHER ROLES
Supporter of World Wide Fund for Nature, Beauty without Cruelty, CRY, Drug Abuse Information, Rehab Centre. Also longest serving chief of FTII's governing council from Oct 2001 to March 2005 after writer U R Ananthamurthy
EARLY LIFE
Born on Oct 6, 1946, in Peshawar, his father was a businessman who dealt in textiles and dyes, his mother was a housewife. Khanna grew up in a joint family with 3 sisters, a brother. After his birth, family moved to Mumbai. He was a student at St Xavier's School and Barnes School in Deolali. At Sydenham college he met first wife Geetanjali.They have 2 sons, Akshaye and Rahul
BIG BREAK AT A PARTY
At a party, Sunil Dutt, who was making Mann Ka Meet, chanced upon Khanna and offered him a role. Khanna made his debut as a villain with Mann Ka Meet which released in 1969, got rave reviews and earned him 15 films in a week. Breaks in leading roles came with Shiv Kumar's Hum Tum Aur Woh, Gulzar's Mere Apne and Achanak and Raj Sippy's Inkaar
SEXY SANYASI
Journey into spirituality began with a reading of `The Autobiography of a Yogi' by Paramahansa Yogananda in college. He was in contact with many spiritual teachers but it was a meeting with Rajneesh aka Osho that altered the course of his life. He retired from films and went to live at Osho's Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, US, where he spent four years as Swami Vinod Bharti. He separated from wife Gitanjali in this phase
RESURGENCE
Khanna returned to films in 1987 with Insaaf. His guru wanted him to remain in the fold and work at his Koregaon ashram but Khanna said he had completed his journey with his guru. Went on to star in Jurm, Chandni and Batwara; later married again. His wife Kavita is from a family of industrialists. They have two children Sakshi and Shraddha
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