By Er Rajesh Pathak, Bhopal
Working for Star Style magazine, Devyani Chauble was once one of the most widely read film journalists, whose “scoops” often stirred controversies. Because of these, she faced many court trials. Her father being a barrister, and most of her kin associated with the legal profession, nothing worse could happen to harm her, however. She was also known for her close association with the then super-star Rajesh Khanna. For fans and the public in general, her revelations about Rajesh Khanna were taken as the most authentic.
When the movie Anand was released, Rajesh Khanna is said to have asked Devyani about it and about the overall performances of those associated with it. Her curt reply was: “You had better not make the mistake of working with Amitabh Bachchan henceforth.”
Rajesh Khanna asked, “Why?”
“Didn’t you see how much depth is there in his eyes, and from what depth rises the voice, reverberating as it comes out? This man will devour you,” she answered.
But the sky-rocketed ego, boosted by equally soaring success, had by then already held Rajesh Khanna captive. He paid no heed to this fair advice of a well-wishing friend. And he repeated the mistake of playing a role alongside Amitabh in Namak Haram—and what happened then, everybody knows.
Sharing her experience with Rajesh Khanna, Devyani was once quoted as saying that even in his youthful prime, Rajesh Khanna was both a 60-year-old man talking of high ideals of life, and at the same time, a 6-year-old child with a flickering mind, sometimes hard to appease!
In a nutshell, however, it is not the age but the behaviour and outlook with which one lives that determine the stage of life one chooses to stay in—whether at 60 years, 6 years, or anywhere in between.
Yes, what one needs to live like the young—you may listen to Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra, film director and notably, the maker of epics such as Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. When asked by an interviewer when he felt he was losing his magic as a filmmaker, he replied: “Don’t take movie-making as the trick of a magician, where on removing the cap the audience sees a pigeon fly out above the head. What is required to maintain the magic, that I can tell you from what I feel.”
“I take cinematographer Ashok Mehta as my guru,” adds Rakesh Mehra. “Ashok Mehta used to say: ‘Koee boodha nahin hota, boodhape ka shikar hota hai’ (Nobody grows old, but one becomes the victim of feeling old).” Later, I happened to meet Narayan Murti of Infosys. I requested him, ‘Sir, I need a mantra from you!’ His reply was: ‘If you want to stay active like the young, spend more time among young people.’ This alone is the magic I have found in my life, which has never let my continuity break. I try to maintain distance from the mentally old, dim-spirited individuals who lack focus on what is admirable around them.”
“True,” went on Rakesh Mehra, “everybody has to face dark spaces in life one day or another—so did I. What happens when something wrong occurs in your life is that in the beginning, you set upon blaming the entire world. Then you try to evade people, almost everybody else, as far as possible. After a phase, you begin to realize and settle down to recover your true self. In other words—anger, denial, and then acceptance are the three stages one undergoes. Whoever understands this can bounce back. A stage came, and I too made a comeback,” says the filmmaker Rakesh Mehra as an end note.
(The author is a civil engineer and a freelance contributor to various publications and can be reached at 9826337011
