Rajat Bedi, who is making headlines with his comeback on Aryan Khan’s show The Ba**ds of Bollywood*, recently spoke about his late father and director/producer Narendra Bedi. The actor opened up about his father’s relationship with Rajesh Khanna and how the legendary actor’s rivalry with Amitabh Bachchan caused him significant financial losses.
Recalling the moment he saw his father take his last breath, Rajat shared, “He died in front of my eyes. I came from school and he came out of the room and collapsed in front of me.” When asked how his father’s health deteriorated, Rajat explained, “He had become an alcoholic, he got into depression. He was doing very well but my grandfather had some liabilities of films and my father was taking care of that.”
Talking about how Rajesh Khanna’s competition with Amitabh Bachchan affected his father’s finances, he said, “Then my dad was also facing issues with Rajesh Khanna. He had started 2-3 films with Rajesh Khanna and Rajesh Khanna felt bad that my father was engaging with Amitabh Bachchan and doing projects with him. I don’t know the real story, but my father had taken the unit to Pune for one or two films, and he was waiting for Rajesh Khanna to come. For 10 to 15 days, Rajesh Khanna didn’t come and my father just closed the projects. I guess heroes at that time were problematic or something. So there were some issues between Rajesh Khanna and Papa, maybe because of Bachchan sahab or various other things. So Papa got into….”
Recalling how Rajesh Khanna and his father would drink all night, Rajat shared, “So Rajesh Khanna and Papa used to drink all night. I remember in my house there used to be crates of alcohol. He used to smoke, have Pan Parag, the lifestyle was terrible. Rajesh would leave him at 5-6 in the morning and all night they would be drinking.”
Reflecting on how alcoholism affected his father’s career, he said, “It became so bad that when he would go for shoots… like during the shooting of Sanam Teri Kasam, he would be drinking from morning, and Kamal Haasan ji would get very upset with that because he would come on set smelling of alcohol. He was going through his journey of pain through all those circumstances.”
For the unversed, Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna were rivals in the 1960 and 1970s. While Rajesh Khanna was a superstar in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, but soon, after release of Big B’s Zanjeer released in 1973, Amitabh challenged Khanna’s stardom.
Narendra Bedi was known for helming projects like Jawani Diwani (1972), and Rajesh Khanna-starrers Bandhan and Maha Chor. He also worked with Amitabh Bachchan in films like Benaam (1974) and Adalat (1977).
