By Jagmohan Singh Barhok
On His 78th Birth Anniversary
Vinod Khanna who once became a potential threat to the then super-stars Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra and later Amitabh Bachchan in seventies, was introduced by Sunil Dutt in 1968 movie ‘Man Ka Meet’ starring Som Dutt, Leena Chandavarkar, Om Prakash, Vinod Khanna & Rajendra Nath. He made his presence adequately felt in “Mere Apne” (1971) as an violent youth and later worked in many multi-starrers like “Mera Gaon Mera Desh” & “Kachche Dhaage” (971), “Haath Ki Safai” ( 1974), “Hera Pheri” (1976) “Amar Akbar Anthony”(1977), “Muqaddar Ka Sikander” (1978) “Qurbani” (1980) and “Rajpoot”(1982) to name only some.
He earlier played a villain in ‘Poorab Aur Paschim’, ‘Sacha Jhutha’, and ‘Aan Milo Sajna’. I rate “Achanak” in which he played Major Ranjeet Khanna as his best film as an artist. The film was widely acclaimed both by writers and critics. “Rihaee” starring Hema Malini, Shabana Azami, Neena Gupta & Naseeruddin Shah was another of his mentionable offbeat film. Khannan enoyd his maho man image & beame passionately addicted to his heroines onsets later as was evident from film “Rihaii” was another mentionable film of the actor.
Khanna became a disciple of Osho in late seventies and quit films for many years. His second innings as an actor was not as illustrious as the first one . Married twice, Khanna has Four Filmfare Nominations & two Awards to his credit including Dada Saheb Phalke after his death. Elected MP twice from the Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab, the lion-hearted actor died of cancer on 27 April, 2017.
