Rekha’s biography too, is full of jaw-dropping revelations about her personal life and the movie industry. Rekha: The Untold Story, written by Yasser Usman, talks about Rekha’s tumultuous relationship with Amitabh Bachchan, getting publicly humiliated by her husband’s mother, getting “molested” on the sets of her debut film and much more. There are many rumours, stories and interviews. Rekha reveals how Jaya Bachchan had barred BigB from working with Rekha after Silsila and accused Rekha of shaming the respected family.
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Two of Rekha’s greatest accomplishments often go unnoticed – she was probably the first mainstream actress who didn’t need a hero starring opposite her.
In Rekha: The Untold Story the writer chronicles her life and days and some of the excerpts from the book reveal details that are, well, have to be read to be believed. Congrats Yasser for the most informative book on Rekha, the stunning diva of Bollywood.
Even after all these “stories”, Rekha still seems to be an enigma. She said explosive things in an interview which include statements like “You can’t come close, really close to a man without making love”, “It is sheer fluke that I have never got pregnant so far”, “Premarital sex is very natural”. That day a romantic scene was to be filmed between Rekha and Biswajeet. The one question he would ask Rekha if he got some face time, “How did you make it so big in the face of so much adversity?” Anything about the kiss had not been mentioned to Rekha.
A less than 15-year old girl Rekha was taken aback when his co-star Biswajeet kissed her for five long minutes. She refused to let the new “bride” enter the house. When had she ever shied away from attention, or controversy? “How will the audience accept her as bharat ki nari or insaf ki devi?“. Of course, there are few actors like Rekha or Parveen Babi, who could play the doomed lover sans an overwhelming need to be portrayed as a survivor who, at times, lets the guilty one off the hook. Her interviews were every editor’s dream, as she didn’t believe in holding back. She didn’t need to play the Maa or badi didi in order to be a supporting act; look at her in films like Bhrashtachar, Ladaai, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi (1996), Zubeidaa (2001), Lajja (2001), Bhoot (2002). And during our love scenes, I could see tears pouring down her face. But it wasn’t their life together, but his suicide and the media fuelled witch-hunt that followed.
What led to Rekha’s husband Mukesh Agarwal’s suicide? “Sadly, this industry still has no room for a woman who speaks her mind”. Marriages at the pinnacle of her career provided little to less rescue. It’s when she realized that he was really emotionally involved, that is when it began hurting her.
More than anyone else, Rekha somewhere embodied all that came with being a star.
But what made her path breaking in an industry that continues to categorise women actors as those who look good and those who act, were films like Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan that won her a National Award, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khoobsurat, Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug, Girish Karnad’s Utsav and Gulzar’s Ijaazat, to name a few.
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Yaseer Usman with his work blows the lid off how hard life would have been for a 14-year old sent to Bollywood to earn a living for her family.
