Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story Of India’s First Super Star was Yasser Usman’s first biography, his second is the similarly titled Rekha: The Untold Story. He swears he isn’t a fan of either of these more than celebrated actors and yet their stories drew him in. A self-confessed Bachchan nut, Usman grew up worshipping the star of Zanjeer and Deewar. But when it came his turn to write about the stars, it’s those that orbit around his childhood hero that grab his attention. Rajesh Khanna’s stardom was clouded over by the cult of the angry young man and Rekha’s association with Bachchan is already the stuff of Bollywood legend.
His fascination with Rekha was piqued early on, he remembers discussing the scandalous actor on the schoolyard where friends would berate and love her in the same breath. The general misogyny dictated their labels, from man-eater to tantrum throwing diva. But over the past year or two, Usman dug into the vast archive of interviews, dug up old confidantes and family members and began chipping away into the actor’s journey, from Bhanurekha Ganesan to the mononymous Rekha.
Even though Rekha refused to be interviewed for the book, Usman seems to have documented this superstar’s tale through her films, men and rise to fame in the face of infamy. “I wanted to tell Rekha’s story right. I couldn’t succumb or brush aside the scandal and controversy around her. I wanted to understand her as a person and as an actor,” explains Usman. The one question he would ask Rekha if he got some face time, “How did you make it so big in the face of so much adversity?” While the book isn’t an interior or insightful narrative about Rekha, the person, it does document and log the phenomenal rise of the underdog in an overtly patriarchal industry and world.
“She was called a ‘sex kitten’. A fourteen-year-old ‘sex kitten’.”
In a film called Anjana Safar, a 14-year-old Rekha and 30-something Biswajeet were filmed kissing. This was way back when a kiss on the mouth was taboo (one wonders if the industry has changed much!) and lovers romanced by singing songs drenched in double entendre, flowers swaying to signify any sort of sexual contact. The kiss immediately headlined Rekha as a “sex kitten” and an actor ready to perform “bold scenes”. The layered conflict of the scene, however, lay in the fact that a minor was made to perform without prior consent (her producers insisted otherwise, and in the classic he-said-she-said, Rekha’s silence was overwritten as consent). But what becomes surprising about this incident is that the teenager refused to let it knock her down, instead she carried on, undeterred because she had a family to support. The long forgotten story becomes pivotal to understanding the sort of discrimination and abuse faced by the young actor, and the image that she went on to appropriate, which created the star we know her as.
‘“No conscientious director will work with her ever again. How will the audience accept her as bharat ki nari or insaf ki devi?” – Subhash Ghai’
No stranger to controversy, she was the love child of Gemini Ganesan and dealing with her last name and the baggage it came with was part of her childhood. Rekha was unlike most women of her time. Her interviews were every editor’s dream, as she didn’t believe in holding back. She talked about the hypocrisy of women not admitting to pre-marital sex, she openly spoke about her men (breaking the cardinal Bollywood rule of never revealing an affair with a married man) and heartbreak. On screen she played the courtesan, the other woman and the rape survivor.
While more has been said about the Rekha-Amitabh affair than probably any other alleged affair in the history of Bollywood—the book goes through her other loves as well, be it Jeetendra or Vinod Mehra. But the one man who Usman believes changed Rekha’s life the most was the one she married—Mukesh Agarwal. But it wasn’t their life together, but his suicide and the media fuelled witch-hunt that followed. The book explores in great detail the attack on Rekha, where friends and family blamed her and the media capitalised with sensational headlines. According to Usman, this led to Rekha’s transformation from media darling to the reclusive mysterious diva figure we know her as today, in turn making her the quintessential woman punished for having an opinion, “Look at what we’re doing to Kangana Ranaut,” he says. “Sadly, this industry still has no room for a woman who speaks her mind.” Of course, Rekha proved Ghai and a lot of the industry wrong and returned with a massive box office hit called Phool Bane Angarey, eight months after Agarwal’s death.
‘“How is this dark, plump and gauche actress ever going to make it?” – Shashi Kapoor’
In a career that spans over 200 films, Rekha has done her share of the big fat Bollywood formulae flicks. When she began, most producers turned her away because she was dark skinned with a 33-inch waist and didn’t speak a word of Hindi, in an industry that was obsessed with light skin and narrower waists. But over time and with scores of films, Rekha quickly established herself as a mainstream star with box office hits that included Raampur Ka Lakshman and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar.
But what made her path breaking in an industry that continues to categorise women actors as those who look good and those who act, were films like Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan that won her a National Award, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khoobsurat, Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug, Girish Karnad’s Utsavand Gulzar’s Ijaazat, to name a few. She crossed over from the sensational to performance-oriented roles that went on to make her one of the most lauded actors of her time. And her trajectory and work is what makes her story go beyond the Bachchan drama.
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