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Dark Star : The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna

By Gautam Chintamani

 499.00 inclusive of all taxes

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About the book

FOREWORD BY SHARMILA TAGORE The first-ever biography of the enigmatic Rajesh Khanna, the original ‘superstar’ If ever a life was meant to be a book, few could stake a stronger claim. Like a shooting star doomed to darkness after a glorious run, Rajesh Khanna spent the better half of his career in the shadow of his own stardom. Yet, forty years after his last monstrous hit, Khanna continues to be the yardstick by which every single Bollywood star is measured. At a time when film stars were truly larger than life, Khanna was even more: the one for whom the term ‘superstar’ was coined. Born Jatin Khanna to middle-class parents, the actor was adopted by rich relatives who brought him up like a prince. By the time he won the Filmfare-United Producers Combine Talent Hunt, he was already famous for being the struggler who drove an imported sports car.With seventeen blockbuster hits in succession and mass adulation rarely seen before or since, the world was at Khanna’s feet. Everything he touched turned to gold. The hysteria he generated – women writing him letters in blood, marrying his photograph and donning white when he married Dimple Kapadia, people bringing sick children for his ‘healing’ touch after Haathi Mere Saathi – was unparalleled. Then, in a matter of months, it all changed. Khanna’s career hit a downward spiral as spectacular as his meteoric rise just three years after Aradhana (1969) and never really recovered. Dark Star looks at the phenomenon of an actor who redefined the ‘film star’. Gautam Chintamani’s engaging narrative tries to make sense of what it was that made Rajesh Khanna and what accounted for his extraordinary fall. A singular account of a wondrous life.

Pages: 272

Available in:

Language: English

Gautam Chintamani

Gautam Chintamani is the author of Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna (2014) and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak: The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema (2016). His writing has featured in national publications, including a compilation on Dadasaheb Phalke Awardees published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Legends of Indian Silver Screen. He was on the National Film Awards jury for Best Writing on Cinema in 2016. Gautam is the great-grandson of literarian Sir C.Y. Chintamani and the grandchild of Telugu poet laureate Aurdra and noted feminist writer K. Ramalakshmi. He and his wife, Amrita, along with their dog, Buddy, live in Gurgaon and in the hills of Himachal.

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