DNA (March 27, 2018)

There were rumours that Karan Johar will be making a movie on the life of spiritual guru, Bhagwan Rajneesh, who is also known as Osho. However, it has now come to light that the filmmaker was never planning to take this project on. But this isn’t the end of the story.

According to sources, Shakun Batra has apparently penned a script on the life of Osho that may be made for an international streaming channel as a web series. And none other than Aamir Khan is said to have shown interest in the project. An insider says, “Everyone knows what a great sense of script Aamir has. When he got to know about this one, it immediately piqued his interest. In fact, he is said to have visited Los Angeles, USA, to meet the officials of the streaming channel. This is definitely an important development.”

ON THE CARDS
Aamir also has his ambitious project Mahabharat on the cards. “This project may happen before Mahabharat,” feels the source. Biopics are the order of the day in Bollywood, and looks like this one will be an interesting addition to the list.

ALIA BHATT GIVES A THUMBS-UP, TOO
Alia Bhatt, who has worked with Shakun in Kapoor & Sons and is a close friend of the director, has apparently heard the script. The source adds, “She, too, has loved it. It’s not known whether she will be a part of the project, but she believes it’s a great script.”

B-TOWN’S TALKING ABOUT OSHO
The Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country, which is based on Osho and the international community, Rajneeshpuram, in Oregon, USA, was released on March 16. The show is a huge hit with viewers and has caught the fancy of B-Towners, too. Actors like Emraan Hashmi and Riteish Deshmukh have even been tweeting about it. With the sudden focus on the spiritual guru’s life, one wonders if this might lead to more projects on the same topic cropping up.

Meena Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 28, 2017)

Vinod Khanna: October 6, 1946 - April 27, 2017

Sometime in the late 1970s, I was at Tina Munim’s home in Khar. Vinod Khanna, her co-star in Lekh Tandon’s Khuda Kasam, was also there. Khanna, who was by then deep into Osho, was wearing an orange kaftan and a shiny chain with a Bhagwan Rajneesh locket. It was not the most stylish of outfits but this writer, then a trainee film journalist, thought Khanna looked dashing. That was the thing about the man — he could look sexy even if he were bubble-wrapped.

Dharmendra was possibly handsomer, but he did not possess Khanna’s urbane sophistication, or his languid sexuality, or his swag, or that cleft on his chin. I always thought he was, in a way, India’s Steve McQueen. But what made Khanna such a draw was that at the height of his stardom, he simply walked away from it all. “In the film industry, I had money, glamour, fame but wondered ‘now what?,” he once told a newspaper. In that sense, he was, as far as Bollywood stars, famed for their insecurities, go, a singular man.

I first heard about his failing health about five years ago, and proceeded to write about it. The next day Khanna, who passed away yesterday after a long, courageous battle with bladder cancer, called me up to register his protest against my writing the piece. He told me that his illness was his business, and my concern for his health, however deep, was not enough reason to intrude into his privacy.

Khanna was a deeply private man, but he could also be pleasantly candid. By the time I found my footing in film journalism, he had flown to Oregon. He was a part of Osho’s inner coterie, tending to the godman’s gardens and performing routine chores, which, he said, gave him “more mental peace than his superstardom”. When he returned after five years in the late 1980s, producers clamoured for him, as did the media. And whenever one met him, he spoke about his stint at Osho’s ashram in the US without hesitation.

The first film he did after he returned in the 1980s was Mukul Anand’s Insaaf. During the film, he got along like a house on fire with Dimple Kapadia-Khanna, who would often joke, “If VK and I were to get together, I wouldn’t even have to change my surname.’’ But it was not Dimple but Amrita Singh with who Khanna was in a relationship at that point. Their relationship didn’t lead to marriage, because Khanna wasn’t ready for commitment. Mahesh Bhatt, who was Khanna and Amrita’s close confidante, kept their relationship a closely guarded secret.

The woman he first lost his heart to, though, was Gitanjali Taleyarkhan. Khanna, who studied in Bombay, met Talyarkhan in college and wanted to marry her just a few months into their relationship. Randhir Kapoor, who was one of Khanna’s close buddies even before the two of them entered Bollywood, once told me how they would double-date back in the day. “I was seeing Babita and Vinod was seeing Gitanjali.’’ Their sons Rahul and Akshaye were very young when he donned his saffron robes, and his spiritual tryst and the distance it necessitated from his family ultimately led to their divorce. Khanna found love again in the late 1980s and married Kavita Daftary.

Khanna’s most striking performances were in movies with Gulzar (Mere Apne, Achanak); Mahesh Bhatt (Jurm) and with his great friend J P Dutta. He may have signed 15 films at one go after his debut in Man ka Meet (1969) and snapped hard at Amitabh Bachchan’s heels, but he found things a lot tougher in his second stint. He was already in his 40s and though still achingly handsome, he had to contend with a flock of fitter, hungrier actors such as Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol. But that didn’t stop Khanna from creating a flutter, and he made a strong comeback with Insaaf and Satyamev Jayate. It was as if the hiatus in Oregon never happened, and such was the craze for Khanna that he ended up doing three shifts a day.

Screenwriter Faiz Qureshi’s son, Parvez, says that when his father needed money for his mother’s hospitalisation, Khanna took him home, opened a cupboard crammed with money and told him to “take however much money you need to fund your wife’s treatment”. According to an industry source, an actor, who moved to Mumbai in the late 1990s and has made it fairly big, still hasn’t moved out of an apartment in Juhu that Khanna owns.

When it came to politics, Khanna, who joined the BJP in 1997, went the way of most Bollywood stars and exhibited a lackadaisical attitude towards his constituency — Gurdaspur — and was never really able, despite being a MoS for External Affairs, to give politics his undivided attention. Khanna, who lost his seat in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, wrested it back in 2014, riding on the back of the Narendra Modi wave. But by then, like it was back in the 1970s, he was probably beyond triumph and defeats, and dealing with the ultimate question of death. And, it is said he dealt with it well and courageously. A relative of Khanna told me that he had categorically refused chemotherapy. According to Khanna, his tryst with spirituality had prepared him to own his pain and live with it right until the final blackness.

Rishi Kapoor: ‘We’ve lost two great Khannas’
I’ve worked with Vinod on many films and knew him closely. It’s a sad day for me. I had visited him only three weeks ago when he was in the hospital. I was told by his wife Kavita that he was reading my autobiography, I’m glad he got to read it. He always brought a smile on everyone’s face. We have lost two great Khannas in the recent past — Rajesh and now Vinod. I have cancelled all my meetings for the day, including a rehearsal. I’m not in the frame of mind for it.

Jackie Shroff: ‘He supported me on the day I could have died’
For a scene in Patthar Ke Insaan, Vinod had to fire six bullets at my chest. The shoot was in the evening and the team was in a rush. The bullets were supposed to be connected to a power battery without a power source, but in his hurry, the fight master forgot to switch the current off. The shocks felled me; I could have died that day. When Vinod found out about the goof-up, he fired the fight master even though he was his favourite. I was breathless and he supported me during that time.

Mahesh Bhatt: ‘I took him to Rajneesh’s ashram’
Vinod was Raj Khosla’s Jabbar Singh, a dreaded dacoit, in Mera Gaon Mera Desh. After the first shot, Raj prophesised that he’d become a star. Vinod was a generous man who never let go of those he loved till he’d seen them out of the woods. I took him to Rajneesh’s ashram to help him overcome the loss of his mother. He found solace in Pune. I walked away from Osho after two-and-a-half years, he aborted his successful career and went with Osho to Oregon to work as a gardener in his quest for peace.

Mahesh Bhatt (MID-DAY; April 28, 2017)

My earliest memory of Vinod is from the sets of Raj Khosla’s Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) , where I was the third assistant, and he was making his debut as a villain — Jabbar Singh, not Gabbar Singh! At the very first shot of the film where Vinod dismounts a horse, kicks open a door, and draws his gun out, Raj Khosla said the prophetic words, “This guy will set this nation ablaze.” As an assistant who was entrusted to attend to actor’s needs, we became very close right from the beginning — even while he was a rising star, and I was a struggling nobody. When the opportunity came for me to direct a film, it was a foregone conclusion in my head that he would agree to star in it, although the movie, ironically titled Mukti, got shelved, for financial reasons.

The loss of Vinod’s mother, who he was extremely close to, had jolted him to seek answers to existential questions of life — who are we, where are we coming from, and where are we going. I introduced him to ‘Bhagwan Rajneesh’, so he could find solace in the Godman’s tips. I was already a sanyasi by then. Every weekend, Vinod and I would drive down to Osho’s ashram (in Pune) in his white Mercedes, meditate for hours, listen to the Godman’s discourse, read books on Sufism, Nanak, the Gita… Those were intoxicating days.

As an actor, Vinod immediately fit the demands of the times. He was extremely good-looking by the standards of the film industry. Women would swoon over his physique, charm, and charisma. Men would look up to him for the obvious machismo. He remained the only contender who could take on the might of Amitabh Bachchan, or perhaps even dethrone him in the '70s. This was the prevailing narrative. And this is why, if you notice, whenever Vinod did a film with Big B — Hera Pheri (1976), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), Khoon Pasina (1977), Parvarish (1977), Muqaddar Ka Sikander (1978) — audiences instantly lapped it up. They were a delight to watch together.

But much beyond his ambition or determination to succeed as an actor, Vinod had an adventurous spirit. What kind of person would gamble his stardom to seek enlightenment? He packed off at the peak of his career to become a gardener in Osho’s ashram in Oregon. It was considered a suicidal move by the industry. By the time he returned in the '80s, India and its movies had altogether changed. I did Jurm (1990) upon his return from the ‘circus’. Many people still remember that film for the song, Jab koi baat bigad jaaye.

Vinod was basically a man who celebrated life. His spiritual guru also encouraged sensual pursuits, and he thirsted for life’s answers. Over years, while we differed on our views on politics, spirituality and God, and drifted apart, we still stayed in touch. I’ll never forget the time he once called me over to meet him at Filmistaan Studio, Goregaon. I was no more Osho’s disciple — having figured that all I had received from the Godman were words; nothing had changed within me. Vinod was worried for me because the news of me flushing my Osho mala (prayer beads) down the commode had reached the Godman. He wanted to protect me from the wrath of ‘God’. It’s at moments like these that one unwittingly reveals their love and affection. Behind that tough exterior of a hero was a largehearted man, who could cry easily at the sight of suffering, and was generous to a fault. Vinod, to me, is not the person I’ll remember from flickering images of the silver screen. He touched my life, and changed its course. People don’t cease to exist because they die. They continue to breathe within you. As Vinod will — until I die.

Mahesh Bhatt directed Vinod Khanna in Lahu Ke Do Rang (1979), Jurm (1990) and Maarg (1992) 

(As told to Mayank Shekhar)

Renuka Vyavahare (BOMBAY TIMES; April 16, 2017)

His nephew Akhil Kapur will co-produce it along with Abhishek Kapoor who will also direct it
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; January 10, 2017)