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How are enigmas created? How does a self-effacing girl who transforms into the proverbial swan create a career that is written in letters of gold, become a success story that millions want to emulate, and then return to her own shell? Rekha, born Bhanurekha Ganeshan to film idol Gemini Ganeshan and actress Pushpavali, is perhaps India’s closest to its own Greta Garbo, who steps out for a rare appearance in the cloud of Kanjivaram as cameras follow her, but never lets her down .
The actor, who turns 68 today, didn’t even want to be a marquee queen. Her dream was to become a flight attendant and see the world. The national award-winning actor, who now rarely gives interviews, once revealed how her mother was keen on her taking up acting. She told the BBC in a 1986 interview: “My father, not so much, but my mother really wanted me to work in films. But for at least six or seven years I didn’t like what I was doing. I was being dragged to photos, I was working double shifts, I didn’t like it at all.”
Rekha, who made her screen debut as a toddler and was a full-time actress by the time she turned 15, added, “I never wanted to be an actor. If you ask most actors, they will say that they always wanted to join the film industry, but not me. I never wanted to become an actor, mujhe maar maar ke banaya gaya (I was made to obey).”
Her entry into the cinema was not easy. Ashamed of her body and color, Rekha made a difficult transition into a femme fatale. If her movies and character choices made news, so did her life choices. Author and journalist Yasser Usman wrote Rekha Rekha’s biography The Untold Story in 2016, which details her life, acting career and personal life.
Talking about how Rekha has taken on unconventional roles that are now hailed as female-centric, the author tells indianexpress.com that her hard work of almost a decade has earned her the authority to demand such central characters. “There is a reason behind it. Whenever we talk about female-oriented roles and big scripts where the actress is the focus, I think you have to reach that stage as a star because everything is driven by the market. We may not remember the 100 odd films she did in the 1970s, very few were successful. There were so many movies, even B movies, but in the late 1970s, she reached star status. She worked hard to reach the kind of stardom that she could ask producers and directors to give her the roles.
The actor is perhaps the first actor in Bollywood to take on “female-oriented” roles. Her work in films like Khoon Bhari Maang and Biwi Ho To Aisi and others established her identity. The actor also starred in films like Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love and Aasta: In the Spring Jail in an era when film actresses were still portrayed as lying and shy on screen.
River in a still from her movie Khoon Bhari Maang.
Yasser adds: “She started in 1969 and then became a huge star by the end of the 70s, so that was her struggle for almost 10 years. After her husband Mukesh Agarwal’s suicide, she made a comeback with Khoon Bhari Maang. There was no one but Rekha to do it and it was a huge hit that year. She later did a revenge drama Phool Bane Angaare by KC Bokadia which was again a commercial hit.
Reka wasn’t just a movie star; she was also a fashion icon. Fashion designer Rick Roy says, “(Her choice of) sarees came much later, but she was responsible for pushing fashion to what it was at the time, and that’s why Rekha is so iconic. When everyone else was doing something else, I think Rekha would have come up with something outrageous. I think everyone of my generation was inspired by that.” Rekha was not just a pretty face in front of the camera, her look was bold and she made a statement in various magazines as well.
“Her personality was also very unforgiving. She was a trendsetter in her own way. For fashion, that’s the magic. If you’re aware of what you’re wearing, you’re killing it. You should not care what you wear and have the confidence to wear it. When everyone else was wearing sarees, Rekha would come up with something like a hat, these bandanas. No one else was doing it at the time. “
But when did Rekha become a recluse? Yasser believes that this transition happened after Agarwal’s suicide. She was always followed by gossip and speculation – her relationships were often written about, especially with Amitabh Bachchan and the death of her husband Mukesh Agarwal. Yasser says that Rekha was open about her relationships and often talked about it freely in interviews, but something changed in her after Mukesh’s death, for which she was blamed by several sections of the society.
“If you go to her interviews in 1970, actually up to 1984-1985, she was the one talking about these relationships. She herself talks about them in 100 interviews and sometimes hints or even uses names. In my personal opinion, if there was no Silsila, there would be no visuals to the story either… I think more than anything, the episode with Mukesh Aggarwal changed her and she stopped talking to the media. “
He adds, “When I was writing the book, Rekha was not involved in it, I just got a call from her secretary asking me what it was about. I interviewed a lot of people, some people hinted (about her relationships) that of course there was something and most of them wanted to focus on her career. My book focuses a lot on the Mukesh Aggarwal episode. I think it was the most important episode of her life, not because of the interest in her personal life, but because it changed her personally as well as professionally. Like if you see Rekha’s entire graph, she was never a recluse in the early 15-20 years of her career. It changed her.
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