Page 8 - Seniorstoday July-2023 Issue
P. 8
When her films started becoming hits, her competition, she dared to do offbeat
producers bit back their barbs and cast her. films like Ghar, Kalyug, Vijeta. In the late
Or her filmography (on imdb.com) would Seventies and early Eighties, she had hits
not have hit 190, which is a huge number of like Mr Natwarlal, Muqaddar Ka Sikander,
films, even if many of them are forgettable. Kartavya, Khubsoorat, and the National
She was cast with the top heroes of the Award-winning highpoint of her career,
time, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Umrao Jaan (1980).
Khanna, Jeetendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Vinod The triangle she was involved with blew
Mehra. Then she was cast in Hrishikesh open with the release of Yash Chopra’s
Mukherjee’s Namak Haram (1973) and Silsila (1981), which became gossip
Amitabh Bachchan was in it, though she fodder for months, but did not do well
was paired with Rajesh Khanna. Three commercially. That may have also caused
years later, she was cast opposite Bachchan the cooling down of the rumours, even
in Do Anjaane and it could be considered though she wore sindoor in her hair, and
a turning point in her career, which was looked enigmatic when asked about it. (Her
never short of hits. marriage to businessman, Mukesh Agrwal
There is also the fact that most was short-lived and ended in his tragic
mainstream heroines of the time were death by suicide).
interchangeable; it was the age before By this time, she was also a fashion
stylists and trainers, so they all wore icon, with her make-up, hairstyles, saris,
the same garish outfits, big hairdos and blouses and jewellery being imitated by
excessive make-up. It took Rekha some women all over the country. (That thick
effort to acquire the sheen of style. She line of sindoor and maroon glossy lipstick
gave the unnamed ‘him’ the credit for that some women still favour, goes back to
her makeover, but maybe there she was Rekha).
doing an injustice to herself. Throughout
her career, she has worked at reinventing
herself. In the 1980s, when fitness was not
a fad, she learnt yoga with Ramma Bans
and came up with her Mind & Body Temple
video, probably inspired by Hollywood
star’s aerobics video. Still, it was quite a
craze then, and Rekha could have been the
one to kick off the fitness trend. Magazines Southindian fashion.com
wrote about her amazing transformation
from overweight to svelte. Even her voice
took on a low, sexy timbre.
When she was a mainstream success The “Classic Rekha” look still a hit in India
with Sharmila Tagore, Mumtaz, Hema There was a younger lot of leading ladies
Malini, Rakhee, Zeenat Aman, Reena making a mark—Sridevi, Jaya Pradha,
Roy, Moushumi Chatterjee, Parveen Madhuri Dixit, Tina Munim to name a few.
Babi, even Shabana Azmi and Smita Still, when an actress was required who
Patil when they did commercial films, as combined glamour and talent, the roles
8
