Tag: Rajesh Khanna

Categories
Event

‘Kaka’ immortalised in brass, statue at Bandra Bandstand soon

Rajesh Khanna statue unveiled over the weekend; will soon be installed at Bandra Bandstand with those of other film legends.
by Salil Jayakar

Regarded by his fans as Bollywood’s first superstar with several back-to-back silver jubilee hits to his name, legendary actor Rajesh Khanna died in July last year. But his memory will live on…

UTU Stars ‘Walk of the Stars’ is installing his statue at Bandra’s Bandstand promenade. Khanna’s brass statue – in which he is seen holding balloons in his right hand – shows him in one of this iconic poses from the 1971 hit Anand. The statue was unveiled by his wife Dimple Kapadia, daughter Twinkle Khanna and son-in-law Akshay Kumar over the weekend, on August 10, a little over a month after the actor’s first death anniversary.

rajesh khanna statuePresent at the unveiling were some of Khanna’s leading ladies from the 70s – Asha Parekh, Zeenat Aman and Hema Malini – and colleagues and friends including Sanjay Khan, Shammiji, Rishi and Randhir Kapoor, Anju Mahendru, Jackie Shroff, Rakesh Roshan, Jeetendra, Honey Irani, Poonam Sinha, Mithun Chakraborty and Jeetendra. While Bollywood’s younger generation was notably absent, Farhan and Adhuna Akhtar and Zoya Akhtar were present.

Estranged wife Dimple seemed visibly emotional at the unveiling and said, “He left us, and Indian cinema, with many wonderful memories and an unmatched legacy. The quintessential Hindi film hero with a magnetic personality, he won the love and adoration of millions in India and overseas. This statue by UTV Stars will continue his charismatic connect with his fans.”

The statue will be installed at a later date at the Bandra Bandstand promenade along with those of Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor and Yash Chopra.

(Pictures courtesy UTV Stars)

Categories
Cinema@100

When Dharam paaji changed clothes on the roads

Up to the 1980s, Indian film stars would change in makeup rooms or people’s homes or even in secluded woods. Vanity vans didn’t exist till the late 1980s.
by Jatin Sharma

Vanity vans are an essential part of film stars’ lives today. Why just film stars, even starlets shooting for music videos or ads get their own vanity van these days, depending on the production house and its budget.

Shahrukh Khan’s vanity van costs almost the same as the budget for a small movie: a whopping Rs 3.5 crore. It has all the facilities that a little house can provide: an air conditioner, a refrigerator, an oven, a master bedroom, massage seats, and many more that one could never imagine were fitted inside what is, essentially, a vehicle.

Salman Khan’s vanity van took about seven months to be designed and finished as it had to be customised for the Khan. His van even has a ramp that allows his car to get in and out.

manmohan desaiThough you’d think that vanity vans have been around forever – after all, how would one dress and put on makeup and rest in between shots, if not for a vanity van – you would be suprised to know that yesteryear megastars like Rajesh Khanna, Madhubala, Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Hema Malini, Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan spent most of their careers without a vanity van. In fact, the first vanity van came to Bollywood in the late 1980s when Manmohan Desai (in pic on left) gifted one to Amitabh Bachchan.

This information was shared by the ever-charming Dharam paaji when I interviewed him during the promotions of Yamla Pagla Deewana, in which he starred with his sons Sunny and Bobby. Dharam paaji revealed lot of things about the Hindi film industry, and one of them was interesting story about what stars and indeed, all actors, did before vanity vans became the norm in Bollywood.

I asked him, “How did the stars manage before vanity vans?”

He replied, “Whenever the shooting was in the studio, we would share makeup rooms. We would get an individual makeup room if we were that important. And whenever we used to go to shoot outdoors, we would ask the production people to form a circle and change our clothes on the roads or behind the trees, sometimes.”

In the case of female actors, he said, the story was even more interesting. “They would go to people’s houses in the vicinity of the shoot. And if the location was not closer to the shoot, then a four-pole tribal tent would be erected, where the actress could change. Five or six dharmendraproduction people would provide security for her.”

He added that makeup would be done on the road or in the production bus, whose actual purpose was to shift the film equipment and crew from spot to spot.

“It was Manmohan Desai, the director and producer who was a visionary. He got the first vanity van for himself as he had a back pain. (In it, he is learnt to have fit a bed, a television set and even a mirror to watch the TV even with his back to it!) And later he got the first vanity van for his star Amitabh Bachchan. All the other stars of Indian cinema then got exposed to the luxury of a vanity van, and realised they could enjoy some privacy if they had a vanity van of their own. Now, of course, everybody has one.”

(Pictures courtesy pawanpipalwa.blogspot.com, www.gomolo.com, www.funrahi.com)

Categories
Diaries

Celebration of the year

Nothing celebrates Mumbai like cinema can. The Bollywood Art Project does just that, with an emphasis on community visual art.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Concluding part of the Yearender Diaries

You can’t really divorce Mumbai from its film industry. It’s like one is a function of the other, inviting every person for a tantalising glimpse of the fabled world that is a remote as it is seemingly within grasp. And whatever the degree of trouble we’re in, or whatever the level of our happiness, we are diverted fully by the escapism of Bollywood. Heck, sometimes we’re even totally divorced from our own realities by those in Hindi films.

So what better way to celebrate the city than to celebrate Bollywood?

That’s how the Bollywood Art Project (BAP) was born.

Started this year by artist Ranjit Dahiya (read up on him here), the BAP is “a social community project which aims to remind, recognise and exhibit Bollywood in various art forms.” Speaking to The Metrognome, Ranjit said, “I came to Mumbai in 2008 and started living here and working with a website. I was always in awe of Bollywood, and I loved the brand of escapism our films provided – only in our films could you find a hero who would still be alive after being shot five times!”

Ranjit was invited to Paris in 2009 as part of a cultural fest, in which the Hindi film industry was to be honoured. Later, he had a Bollywood showing in another French city. “This made me understand the impact that our films have even on people outside India, because at both places, there was a lot of interest and knowledge about Hindi films and its actors and directors. When I returned home, I felt that we should celebrate Bollywood in Mumbai before we take it to the world,” recalls Ranjit.

The idea for this celebration came only this year. “Since the film industry celebrates 100 years of cinema next year, I decided to do something to contribute to the celebration in my own way,” Ranjit says. The specific idea for this, however, came after the death of yesteryear superstar Rajesh Khanna in July this year, when Ranjit painted a full wall depicting Khanna in all his glory, at Bandstand, Bandra (see pic on left). “It was well-received, and several people remarked that nobody was painting film posters any more,” he muses. “The city lacks the sort of visual art culture that it rightly deserves. Apart from The Wall Project, there is not much happening in terms of visual art anywhere in Mumbai. Besides, there is an instant connect between the city and popular faces in cinema. And when I paint on walls in public spaces, the area comes alive.”

The BAP aims to create visual spaces for people to come and glimpse popular moments and people in Hindi cinema, and hopefully, offer a few minutes of nostalgia as well. “The only film-related landmarks in the city are stars’ homes and film studios, and the general public can’t access both. So the BAP aims to make cinema instantly accessible to the people, and to promote a culture of discussion about cinema on the streets. It’s a community project, so everybody’s invited to come take a look and participate,” Ranjit says. “When I had finished painting Anarkali (featuring Beena Rai and Pradeep Kumar), a Muslim woman stood staring at the painting and whispered, ‘Mashallah! Yeh aapne banaya? (Did you make this?)’ It feels great to have people stop and watch, it adds a whole new vibe to an area,” he says.

For know the latest work under BAP and to sponsor the project, check out www.facebook.com/BollywoodArtProject.

(Pictures courtesy Ranjit Dahiya. Featured image by The Metrognome)

‘Diaries’ is a series of stories on one theme. The Yearender Diaries seek to capture the most telling moments, happenings and people in the city this year.

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