Dark star : the loneliness of being Rajesh Khanna / Gautam Chintamani. ; foreword by Sharmila Tagore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chintamani, Gautam, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Khanna, Rajesh, 1942-2012.

Khanna, Rajesh.

Motion picture actors and actresses--India--Biography.

Motion picture actors and actresses.

India.

Motion picture producers and directors--India--Biography.

Motion picture producers and directors.

Politicians--India--Biography.

Politicians.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiv, 242 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white, and colour) ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers India, 2014.

Summary:

FOREWORD BY SHARMILA TAGORE -- -- The first-ever biography of the enigmatic Rajesh Khanna, the original 'superstar' -- -- If ever a life was meant to be a book, few could stake a stronger claim. Like a shooting star doomed to darkness after a glorious run, Rajesh Khanna spent the better half of his career in the shadow of his own stardom. Yet, forty years after his last monstrous hit, Khanna continues to be the yardstick by which every single Bollywood star is measured. -- At a time when film stars were truly larger than life, Khanna was even more: the one for whom the term 'superstar' was coined. Born Jatin Khanna to middle-class parents, the actor was adopted by rich relatives who brought him up like a prince. By the time he won the Filmfare-United Producers Combine Talent Hunt, he was already famous for being the struggler who drove an imported sports car. -- With seventeen blockbuster hits in succession and mass adulation rarely seen before or since, the world was at Khanna's feet. Everything he touched turned to gold. The hysteria he generated - women writing him letters in blood, marrying his photograph and donning white when he married Dimple Kapadia, people bringing sick children for his 'healing' touch after Haathi Mere Saathi - was unparalleled. Then, in a matter of months, it all changed. Khanna's career hit a downward spiral as spectacular as his meteoric rise just three years after Aradhana (1969) and never really recovered. -- Dark Star looks at the phenomenon of an actor who redefined the 'film star'. Gautam Chintamani's engaging narrative tries to make sense of what it was that made Rajesh Khanna and what accounted for his extraordinary fall. A singular account of a wondrous life. --

Contents:

1 Childhood, College and Struggle 3

2 The Contest 10

3 The Arc Lights 15

4 Aradhana 27

5 The Birth of a Phenomenon 36

6 That God Feeling 49

7 Cracks and Tremors 73

8 That Sinking Feeling 99

9 Free Fall 112

10 Looking Back, Looking Forward 134

11 The Return of the King 152

12 End of Days 169

13 Of Broken Dreams 183

14 Curtain Call 195

15 Silences and Darkness 203

16 Pack-Up 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789350296202

9350296209

9789351363408

9351363406

OCLC:

900148344