Vinod Khanna: Goodbye, sleeping prince
Any woman who had a pulse in 1980 and watched Qurbani can vouch for this — the men may have lusted after Zeenat Aman, but all the girls had their eyes on Vinod Khanna.
Mind you, it wasn’t easy. There was Feroz Khan with his cravat and his bare chest and his gold medallion on a chain. But there was Vinod Khanna, racing towards us, in a totally cheesy shot, bare chest heaving, our very own Colin Firth moment.
And then again in 1987, when Khanna famously returned from the mysterious world of Osho, having even more famously tended to his gardens in Oregon, USA, there was a brief moment of hysteria. Khanna was back in Insaaf, a now forgettable, but then entirely exciting drama, with the equally gorgeous Dimple.
One of the two actors forever in the shadow of Amitabh Bachchan (the other being Shashi Kapoor), Khanna was always an unconventional star. Whether he was the local tough in Gulzar’s 1971 film, Mere Apne, playing off against Shatrughan Sinha; the major who kills his wife in Gulzar’s 1973 film Achanak, loosely inspired by the Commander Nanavati killing; or the college professor falsely accused of molestation in the 1974 film, Imtihaan, Khanna was never white or black, good or evil; or the Madhuri Dixit-kissing don in Dayavan. He was like all of us, all too human, all too fallible.
And then there was always the cleft in the chin. And the saffron robes he sported after discovering Osho.
He may have stopped becoming cool for the generation that admired his slow smile and his swagger when he discovered another kind of saffron and joined the BJP, but there was always the consolation that we could rewatch him as Amar in Amar Akbar Anthony or as the best friend-turned-enemy in Hera Pheri.
He may have rediscovered his screen timing as Salman Khan’s father in Wanted and Dabangg, but for women who grew up in the 80s, he will always be the one that got away and then didn’t quite come back fully. In an interview to India Today in 1987, he is described as living in a room in a rundown club just to be close to his sons (who we got to see in the movies as Akshaye Khanna and Rahul Khanna much later).
When he is asked why he left Osho, he gives a philosophical answer designed to make women with intellectual pretensions weak at the knees: “I don't have any more questions. So I'm not looking for answers now. I live moment to moment.’’
If only our actors today sounded so meaningful and effortlessly so.
Remember he belonged to an India that was just discovering individualism and hedonism after the idealism of the 60s and the turbulence of the 70s.
The 80s were a decade bloodied by assassinations, by agitations, and by the thrill of clandestinely discovering the world, literally in living colour with the advent of colour TV in 1982. It was no surprise he went looking for salvation. The whole of India would have loved to follow suit if it could have.
One can only end the way Feroz Khan began Qurbani with an ode to the "sleeping prince" Sanjay Gandhi: Life is a bubble, everyday is a bonus.
That’s how Vinod Khanna lived life.