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Thursday 19 July 2012

Babu Moshai, Kaka, Rajesh Khanna

18th July happens to be my wife's birthday and is usually associated with fun and frolic. This year too personally it was a time to rejoice but it was also a day marked with a certain degree of sadness because of the death of Rajesh Khanna, the first super hero of Hindi film industry, Bollywood at the age of 69. Though surrounded by his family, the super star of yester years, basically died a lonely man.

The rise of Jatin alias Rajesh  Khanna was phenomenal. He started his film career after winning an acting talent contest and then continuously churned out 15 hit films in about 5 years making him the undisputed king of the Indian cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s. People and more importantly he himself thought that he had the 'Midas' touch and was invincible when it came to giving hit movies. He was loved and adore by the millions of Indian cine lovers and he had a legion of doting female fans. This immense success, unfortunately, made him arrogant and he started believing in his own invincibility

One has to run the hardest when one is at the top just to retain his position and this is just what Rajesh Khanna, believing in his own world, did not do. He took things for granted and did not re-invent himself and remained caged to his chocolaty lover boy on screen image. Post the 1971 Bangladesh war saw the emergence of a new more combative India and people wanted to see a new avatar on the Indian cinema scene. Rajesh Khanna was offered many roles which exemplified a new persona, that of an Angry Young Man. he rejected them all. As is the case always, some one's loss is some one's gain, these roles were clinched by the new kid on the blocks, Amitabh Bachchan and the rest as they say, is history. It was the beginning of the end of the Super stardom of Rajesh Khanna. The once invincible super star became a prisoner of his own creation. He fell out with most of the directors with whom he had worked during his hey days and gradually faded out of the public's memory. Amitabh Bachchan's super stardom has continued till date but Rajesh Khanna died basically a forgotten star. A star who evoked fond memories of an era gone by but not connected with today's world.

Blue Caramelers have a lot to learn from the life and times of Rajesh Khanna. The most important thing for all of us is to never take things for granted. We need to continuously innovate and re-invent ourselves so that we are not left behind by the competition. The second thing is that we all need to be very aware of our own surroundings and immediate environment for which we need to do our homework well with respect to our competitors and products and services available in the market. And last but not the least, we need to understand that getting to the top might be any easy thing but to remain there is perhaps one of the toughest jobs.Anyway, with the month of July in full swing and with Jodhpur and Jaipur having opened up their revenue accounts, the fight for the numero uno of Blue Caramel for this month is on. May the best location win!!

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