THE STAR WHO STARTED THE TREND OF THE STAR-KIDS

Ali Peter John

The stories of Rajendra Kumar as a very clever man when it came to money or still making the rounds even after years of his passing away. He was one of the victims of the partition and was a refugee who crossed into India with him and his family starving for days. It was this painful phase in his life that perhaps made him very smart when it came to dealing with the buisness of entertainment. He had signed his first few films for hardly a few thousand rupees, but once he realises his worth as a star, he proved into an expert in dealing with money matters. This is one such story about how he showed his knack for handling money….

Producer Shankar Bhai Bhatt and his director-brother Vijay Bhatt (the uncle of Mahesh Bhatt and Mukesh Bhatt) had signed him to play the leading man in their film, “Goonj Uthi Shehnai” which had a role which could otherwise be played by the ruling stars, Dilip Kumar or Bharat Bhushan. Kumar was paid a sum of rupees one and a half lakh for doing the film and preparations were being made to launch the film.

A few days later, Kumar landed in the office of the Bhatt Brothers and without saying a word returned a lakh of rupees from the one and a half lakh he was already paid. The Bhatt Brothers were confused and worried about this unusual move made by Kumar and asked him to keep the money, but Kumar refused. The Bhatts were apprehensive about Kumar ultimately not doing their film, so they offered him a brand new car which he also refused to accept. The confusion was growing stronger for the brothers….

But Kumar started shooting for “Goonj Uthi Shehnai” and played his role to the best of his ability, it seemed like he knew that his work and his performance would be compared to the best actor around.

The film with some excellent music and a powerful subject went on to be one of the biggest hits. The Bhatts had a grand function to celebrate the success of the film. There were speeches made and trophies presented and then it was the turn of Vijay Bhatt to speak. He said everyone associated with the making of the film had benefited in a big way by its success, but he said he felt sorry for only one man who he thought had made a big mistake by returning more than half the money he was paid and that man he said was the hero of the film, Rajendra Kumar.

It was Kumar’s turn to speak and what he said and did was like an act of a magician. He said he was not a fool and that he knew that the film was going to be a huge hit and he had returned the money only to make sure that the role offered to him would not go to any of the other leading stars.

He openly said that he was not a fool and that he had played a very clever game or made a very correct buisnessman like decision. He then put his hand into his coat pocket and took out a bundle of cheques which he had recieved from leading filmmakers like B.R Chopra and Ramanand Sagar besides others. The total amount of the cheques which he had only recieved as signing amount was eight lakhs of rupees, which he said he could never even dream of making if and when “Goonj Uthi Shehnai” would be a hit. Kumar received a thunderous round of applause for his move….

And then there was no stopping him as he went on giving one big jubilee after another with films like“Toofan Aur Deeya”, “Kanoon”,“Mere Mehboob”,“Arzoo”,“Zindagi” ,“Saathi”,“Talash”,“Dil Ek Mandir”,“Chirag Kahan Roshni Kahan”,“Aas Ka Panchhi”,“Dharti”,“Sasural”,“Suraj”,“ Ayee Milan Ki Bela”,“Hamrahi”and “Gharana”. It was an unusual record which gave him the title, ‘Jubilee Kumar’, but this golden phase in his career was not to last long as he also had a string of failures to his name…

The biggest failure in his otherwise glorious career was a film called “Aman” with Saira Banu as his leading lady (it was a time when the gossip mills were working overtime spreading the story about the two having a romantic liaison). The film was based on the tradegy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the results of the radiation effects on people even after fifty years. The film was produced and directed by Kumar’s friend, Mohan Kumar and was mostly shot on locations and had some beautiful music, besides having Rajendra Kumar having a long interview in English with Lord Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher and anti-nuclear activists which why over the heads of the audience and had to be cut out in India, but nothing, not even the huge funeral scenes of Kumar which was shot on actual locations in New Delhi could save the film from flopping miserably.

It was like the beginning of the end for Kumar whose films now started failing at the box-office consistently. He turned to his acumen as a buisnessman again and this time set up his own industrial empire which also didn’t give him good results.

And his biggest failure was his attempt to launch his son, Kumar Gaurav (Bunty) as a romantic hero. He had in a way started the trend of launching star-children. But Kumar Gaurav couldn’t work the same kind of magic that his father did. It was only his first film, “Love Story” which did very well, but all the other films flopped till he teamed up with Sanjay Dutt in “Naam” directed by Mahesh Bhatt. Rajendra Kumar tried every game in the book to resurrect the career of his son, but nothing worked and the new hero tried establishing his own buisness and is now supposed to be spending most of his time drinking.

The empire Rajendra Kumar had built with Dimple Sound and Recording Studios and his massive bungalow also called ‘Dimple’ came under the bulldozer and now there is only a Dimple Apartments standing where his empire was. And the only thing that keeps his memory alive is the large marble plaque built with the support of his best friend and in-law Sunil Dutt (Dutt’s daughter Namrata is married to Kumar Gaurav) with his name “Padmashri Rajendra Kumar Chowk” standing in the centre of Pali Hill. His daughter, Dimple Patel who was married to an industrialist from East Africa, Rajju Patel has been trying to come up with his biography, but God alone knows why it is taking so much time to write when books, biographies and autobiographies of film celebrities are being published by the dozens these days. If a comedian like Jankidas Mehra can have both a Chowk in Juhu and an autobiography and a biography, why can’t Padmashri Rajendra Kumar Tuli?