The cleft on the chin gave him a distinctive edge. The self-confidence and talent to play both rugged and soft characters did the rest. Vinod Khanna was the rank outsider in the film industry who showed Hindi cinema a new path to screen heroism. In 1969, just out of Sydenham College in Mumbai, Vinod had no connections in or with the Mumbai film industry. Friends, especially female ones, told him he was good-looking and ekdum hero material. But as luck would have it, Sunil Dutt offered Vinod the villain’s role in Man Ka Meet. The film flopped, and Sunil Dutt’s brother Som Dutt, who was elaborately launched in the film, vanished.
But Vinod survived. And how! His longish stint as a villain continued well into the 70s when he played antagonist to Rajesh Khanna in Sachcha Jhootha and Aan Milo Sajna and Dharmendra in Mera Gaon Mera Desh. In the last mentioned, Khanna gave a knock-out performance as the dacoit Jabbar Singh, for whom the belle Laxmi Chhaya sang, ‘Aaya aaya atariya pe koi chor’.
The film industry had already decided Vinod’s fate. They said he was too good-looking to be wasted in villain’s roles. Vinod quietly made the switch to hero-giri with two low-key power-packed performances in Gulzar’s Mere Apne and Achanak. Gulzar, to this day, maintains that Vinod is the most decent and kindhearted human being the filmmaker has ever encountered.
To illustrate his innate goodness and purity, Gulzar recollects the incident when he offered Vinod the role of Raja Bhoj in Meera. After hearing the script, Vinod sighed, “I wish I could play Meerabai.”
In the late 70s, Vinod Khanna formed a solid and rugged team with Amitabh Bachchan. Together they did marvellously entertaining star turns in Manmohan Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish, and in Prakash Mehra’s Khoon Pasina, Hera Pheri and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. But somewhere within him Vinod Khanna began to feel disillusioned with the opportunities being given to him as an actor.
Excepting the stray films—Aruna Raje’s Shaque (where he costarred with his favourite Shabana Azmi with whom he did the maximum films), Feroz Khan’s Qurbani and dear friend Raj Sippy’s Inkaar, no filmmaker was willing to offer Vinod the chance to test his stardom in solo waters.
In the 1980s, Vinod suddenly gave up his thriving career, divorced his lovely wife and went to Oregon in the US to become a gardener in Rajneesh’s ashram. In 1987, he returned to films with Mukul Anand’s Insaaf and Raj Sippy’s Satyamev Jayate. But he couldn’t re-capture the earlier days of glory. Women still found the cleft sexy, critics still thought of Vinod as one of the last among pinup giants and favourite directors like Gulzar, Raj Khosla and Raj Sippy still came forward to make films with Vinod in the lead.
Tragically, most of Vinod Khanna’s post-Oregon films were career embarrassments. Barring a stray Lekin, Vinod’s fans want to remember him by his earlier films and characters. The upright college teacher in Imtihaan, the cop investigating a kidnapping in Inkaar, Meerabai’s compassionate husband in Meera…
In his later years, Vinod Khanna re-invented himself as a politician. His statements about turning his constituency into another Paris may have evoked ridicule among his detractors. But VK was always a dreamer. And this dreamer believed in his dreams. He once switched effortlessly from villainy to heroism. He balanced Raj Sippy and Raj Khosla, Gulzar and Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, and Aruna Raje on the same wavelength.
