Mourning Becomes Rajesh Khanna

The end seemed well near. The emaciated frame of yesteryear superstar looked much older than his biological age of 69 in recent TV footages. For those on the wrong side of forty, it evoked a tinge of sweet nostalgia.

But while Kakaji was getting in and out of hospitals, the response among the Bollywood circles was tepid. It was reported that very few people from film fraternity came to visit him. This is not very surprising as the industry has been harsh towards stars past their prime. Its cold disdain and amnesia was even more pronounced in case of Parveen Babi.

The media, however, continued with its coverage off and on, though not at hysterical levels. This somehow sustained interest among the public and once the news of his death came, it evoked a frenzy which no one saw it coming. It looked like a throwback to the 60s and early 70s, when he was the undisputed king of Bollywood.

If those days it was fan mails, kisses on his cars, getting married to his photograph; now it was effusive tweets and Facebook status updates (a mainstay of current day youth). At least for a day the twain did meet between the greying Vividh Bharti generation and the spiky haired, multiplex MTV Roadies generation.

However, the Twitterati did come up with few howlers, despite Google and Wikipedia at their disposal. Some of them tweeted 'RIP Babu Moshai', though that character was actually played by Amitabh Bachchan and not Rajesh Khanna, who was Anand in the film by same name. It drew some angry responses from others. The fact that the day of his death coincided with Priyanka Chopra's birthday too provided fodder to their imagination. Sample this "Priyanka Chopra's birthday was overshadowed by Rajesh Khanna's death. Somewhere she must be weeping 'Why should boys have all the fun?"'

In Facebook the same old bizarre spectacle happened whenever a celebrity dies. Fans were putting up Rajesh Khanna RIP on their status updates and friends were gleefully clicking the 'like' button. As if they were happy to see him go. Mark Zukerberg should make his engineers work overtime to address this limitation.

Even his professional rivals like Amitabh Bachchan and Javed Akhtar were singing praises of him. It almost seemed as if Kakaji, who had been banished to oblivion after his downfall from superstardom in mid-1970s, has been finally put on a pedestal that was long overdue for him.

Also read: Bangalore Beat