Bhatt recalls Khanna’s haunting confession on losing stardom

There was a time when Rajesh Khanna was not just a star but a national obsession. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he reigned with a hysteria never witnessed before in Hindi cinema. But like all meteoric rises, his too came with an inevitable fall. Mahesh Bhatt recently revealed how he witnessed both shades of the legend, the untouchable superstar and the man coming to terms with fading glory.

The arrogance of success

Bhatt told his daughter Pooja Bhatt on her podcast The Pooja Bhatt Show that he first encountered Rajesh Khanna while assisting Raj Khosla during Do Raaste (1969). “My memory of him was helping him to dub at odd hours of the night. If you asked him for another take, he would say, ‘Go to Dilip Kumar saab on Pali Hill and ask him to do it. I can’t do beyond this’,” Bhatt recalled.It was a telling remark from a man who knew his hold over audiences was unshakable. Flowers, fan letters, crowds outside his bungalow, the frenzy was relentless.

The moment of reckoning

Years later, long after the box office had turned unkind and politics became his new stage, Bhatt ran into Khanna again on a flight. This time the superstar was stripped of his aura, almost philosophical. Bhatt asked him gently, When did you realise you were no longer a superstar?Khanna’s answer was piercing in its simplicity. “The day the flowers stopped coming.” He then explained, “They used to come in trucks, tempos. The house used to get full. One day they didn’t come.”For Mahesh Bhatt, that single line summed up the rise and fall of an icon. Rajesh Khanna never worked with Bhatt in his career. But that fleeting conversation perhaps told the filmmaker more about the man than any collaboration could. Khanna passed away in 2012 at the age of 69.