Rajesh Khanna brought a new template to Bollywood that survives even today

When Rajesh Khanna burst on the scene, India was still in the throes of a quaint socialism that forced the pioneers of Bollywood to follow blindly the social realism they were so much in awe of after being enthralled by the cinema of Eisenstein and Pudovkin.

Raj Kapoor pedalled the Chaplinesque Raj, the hick from somewhere who tries to make his way in the insidious bylanes of Bombay. Guru Dutt made his black-and-whitish paeans to a culture that was fast getting extinguished in the tumult of nation-building. Mehboob’s Mother India remained the proto-film to which all the filmmakers paid obeisance.

With his stunning looks and extravagant charm, Rajesh Khanna created a new template of Bollywood cinema that is still being followed by the Teflon directors of today who still continue to model their heroes on what Khanna started epitomising.

A carefree Khanna in his open jeep on the serpentine road to Darjeeling wooing a demure Sharmila remains the iconic picture that still inspires the modern-day hero to go look for his sapnon ki raani. The jeep is now a well-appointed Merc and Darjeeling is perhaps New Jersey, but the chutzpah and essence of Khanna remain aspirations even in a liberalised India .

Khanna’s insouciant on-screen yodelling, his twisty dance and his nimble tics are some of the emblematic images that stay with aficionados of Bollywood. For, Khanna symbolised a blithe attitude that comes when a nation begins to find its feet.

Who can erase from our collective memory his melodramatic yet meaningful death in Anand, where he falls to cancer before spreading cheer and happiness all around him. Even Shahrukh Khan, in Kal Ho Na Ho, was not able to provide the cloudless comfort Khanna gave us in abandon. Kaka, you will be missed.