A prayer for Vinod Khanna

Yes, it’s heart-achingly true. The picture that went viral on social media yesterday of a frail, emaciated man in a hospital gown leaning hopelessly and helplessly on his wife and son, eyes shut, with grey hair and stubble, is that of yesteryear hero and Bollywood superstar Vinod Khanna. I don’t know who leaked it. The media, as is its wont, seized upon the picture and took it to the janta. Some people say this was insensitive. And uncalled for. But the media has a job to do; which primarily is to report the news. And Vinod Khanna, once the poster boy of what is the equivalent of male beauty, now critically unwell and hospitalized and looking a sad and sorry shadow of his former self, I suppose comes under the category of big news. I cannot agree with this. Nor will I disagree. With everybody having access to the Internet today, the news is available online 24/17. And a media house’s success and popularity depend no longer on the number of newspapers sold. Nor on the eyeballs, it grabs on prime time television. Numbers still count. But now it’s how many hits or likes a story gets once it’s uploaded online. And even if the media were to fail in its discharge of duties, there’s Whatsapp and Facebook, and Instagram on which people greedily share images like that of poor Vinod Khanna yesterday. The more tragic the picture, the more immediately it’s shared. But my heart broke to see him like this. Strangely, of all Bollywood’s heroes I once idolized as a boy, Vinod Khanna is the only actor I do not know and haven’t even met. He belonged to the class of Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Shatrughan Sinha, Sunil Dutt, and Feroz Khan, they all represented rugged machismo on screen, there were others like Rajesh Khanna, Jeetendra, and Sanjeev Kumar who were also fabulous actors but of a different genre. As a boy in the Swinging Seventies, I looked forward to their movies, and these gentlemen averaged five and six a year by working simultaneously on different scripts. When he was at the top of his game, Vinod Khanna quit films to join Bhagwan Rajneesh, he adopted the name Swami Vinod Bharti and accepted the role of gardener and dishwasher in the godman’s commune in Pune. I have heard that this kind of labor is therapeutic. But whether it’s also spiritually uplifting, I doubt. The media, however, loved Vinod Khanna in his new ochre robes. It called him the Sexy Sanyasi. I don’t think this is what he was looking for, because he returned to Bollywood, and quickly tiring of films again joined politics. One foot in the industry, the other in parliament, Vinod Khanna like all of us grew comfortably old over the years. As a fan, I was happy that he still made the occasional appearance on screen. Especially alongside my friend Salman Khan in the ‘Dabangg’ franchise. That’s where I thought he was. Until that heartbreaking picture of him in the hospital surfaced yesterday with the news that Vinod Khanna is suffering from cancer. He’s been a tough guy with a soft heart in all his films. A fighter who overcame overwhelming odds. Anybody struggling against cancer requires prayers because this is nine times out of ten a losing battle. The collective nation to whom he was a hero for years will help. Let’s also leave Vinod Khanna with his dignity intact. In my mind’s eye, he will always be as he appears in this post. A superstar with killer looks. I think that’s what he will also want. And thank you for the years of great cinema, Sir.