{"id":183029,"date":"2025-10-01T17:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/183029\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T17:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:37:08","slug":"mahesh-bhatt-recalls-rajesh-khannas-haunting-confession-on-losing-stardom-the-day-the-flowers-stopped-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/183029\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahesh Bhatt recalls Rajesh Khanna\u2019s haunting confession on losing stardom: \u2018The day the flowers stopped coming\u2019 |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mahesh There was a time when Rajesh Khanna<\/a> was not just a star but a national obsession. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he reigned with a hysteria never witnessed before in Hindi cinema. But like all meteoric rises, his too came with an inevitable fall. Mahesh Bhatt<\/a> recently revealed how he witnessed both shades of the legend, the untouchable superstar and the man coming to terms with fading glory.<\/p>\n

The arrogance of success<\/p>\n

Bhatt told his daughter Pooja Bhatt<\/a> on her podcast The Pooja Bhatt Show that he first encountered Rajesh Khanna while assisting Raj Khosla during Do Raaste (1969). \u201cMy memory of him was helping him to dub at odd hours of the night. If you asked him for another take, he would say, \u2018Go to Dilip Kumar saab on Pali Hill and ask him to do it. I can\u2019t do beyond this\u2019,\u201d Bhatt recalled.It was a telling remark from a man who knew his hold over audiences was unshakable. Flowers, fan letters, crowds outside his bungalow, the frenzy was relentless.<\/p>\n

Mahesh Bhatt Opens Up, ‘Soni Razdan Is A Better Actor Than Alia Bhatt’<\/p>\n

The moment of reckoning<\/p>\n

Years later, long after the box office had turned unkind and politics became his new stage, Bhatt ran into Khanna again on a flight. This time the superstar was stripped of his aura, almost philosophical. Bhatt asked him gently, When did you realise you were no longer a superstar?Khanna\u2019s answer was piercing in its simplicity. \u201cThe day the flowers stopped coming.\u201d He then explained, \u201cThey used to come in trucks, tempos. The house used to get full. One day they didn\u2019t come.\u201dFor Mahesh Bhatt, that single line summed up the rise and fall of an icon. Rajesh Khanna never worked with Bhatt in his career. But that fleeting conversation perhaps told the filmmaker more about the man than any collaboration could. Khanna passed away in 2012 at the age of 69.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a time when Rajesh Khanna was not just a star but a national obsession. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,117104,44413,134,117103,9168,344,9312,117105,58259,117108,117107,117106],"class_list":{"0":"post-183029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bhatt","11":"tag-dilip-kumar","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-fall-of-a-superstar","14":"tag-mahesh-bhatt","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-pooja-bhatt","17":"tag-pooja-bhatt-show","18":"tag-rajesh-khanna","19":"tag-rajesh-khanna-first-superstar","20":"tag-rajesh-khanna-losing-stardom","21":"tag-rajesh-khanna-stardom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}