GLOW

Vinod Khanna shone on the silver screen — and reflected a changing India

ACTOR VINOD KHANNA, who died at 70, first made a mark playing negative characters — memorably, a dacoit with smouldering eyes in Mera Gaon Mera Desh in the early 1970s, when India was gripped, in reel life and real, by the drama between the state and its rebels. His looks stood out and in 1971, Gulzar cast Khanna in his iconic Mere Apne. Pitted against bombastic Shatrughan Sinha, Meena Kumari playing a tragic figure, Khanna still carved space for himself on screen as soft-spoken, jobless Shyam, flaring into angry violence in a turf war with Sinha’s Chennu. Despite his commercial successes, Khanna also did art-house cinema, playing an army major in Gulzar’s dark drama Achanak (1973), murdering his unfaithful wife, in a take on the infamous Nanavati case.

Even as he did cinema with layers, Khanna also played supporting hero to the 1970s’ megastar Amitabh Bachchan — making space for himself there too. His dignified Vishal in Bachchan’s fiery Muqaddar Ka Sikandar was remarkable, embodying a calm, bourgeois stability to Bachchan’s street ruffian angst. Khanna played frothier roles too, including Inspector Amar in Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), Khanna beating up Bachchan, his firm police officer stamping the authority of the law on screen, in a classic that highlighted India’s vibrant secular world.

Khanna stepped away from it all just when his career was soaring. After his hit Qurbani, he left for Osho Rajneesh’s ashram in 1982, an unconventional star before that was considered cool. Returning in 1987, Khanna found himself at another crossroads in India’s time. In 1988, he played don Shakti in Dayavan, a character evoking empathy and terror as the state receded and individuals overawed cities. His role in 1989’s Chandni was an early intimation of aspirational India — glossy, consumerist, imbued with wanderlust, while his 1990s ‘Rajput dramas’ — Kshatriya, Batwara — mirrored a post-mandal society in churn. In 1997, he joined the BJP, but it was his career in cinema that made Khanna a subtle witness and mirror of a changing India.