On Vinod Khanna’s birth anniversary, India Today has resurfaced its 15 August 1987 profile of an actor returning to a film industry that had never quite replaced him. Six years after Khanna walked away from films to follow Bhagwan Rajneesh to Oregon, his comeback was showing up in first-week numbers.
The comeback, measured
Khanna’s first post-return release, Insaaf, and the follow-up, Satyamev Jayate, both touched 100 per cent collections in their opening weeks across much of India, according to the magazine. A Nizam distributor reported recovering 80 per cent of his cost in the first week alone, while returns from the two titles were estimated together at around Rs 10 crore.
- Rs 12 lakh was Khanna’s reported re-entry fee.
- Rs 35 lakh was the reported figure within two films, second only to Bachchan’s Rs 80 lakh.
- 20-plus films were waiting for him, with directors including Prakash Mehra, Gulzar and Muzzafar Ali.
Salim Khan, a writer on many Bachchan films, told India Today that Khanna had been number two when he left and had “walked straight back into that position again.”
Why the trade framed a rivalry
The excitement was amplified by Bachchan’s difficult moment: ill health, political scrutiny, a flop in Aakhri Raasta and a delayed Shehenshah. Trade voices began describing Khanna as a “parallel force”; Prakash Mehra reached for a boxing comparison, with the incumbent as Muhammad Ali and Khanna as Joe Frazier. Khanna himself declined the arithmetic. “I don’t want to be number one… I just want to live from moment to moment and do my work well.”
A return that was personal
The archive makes clear that this was not merely a commercial event. Khanna had left after the deaths of his mother and a niece, and he told the magazine he had gone to Bhagwan because he was confronting mortality. The collapse of Rajneeshpuram complicated the return; Mahesh Bhatt described Khanna as having “come back from Auschwitz” and linked his new screen intensity to that weathered personal history.
On the set of Insaaf, director Mukul Anand recalled Khanna holding up an Rs 8 lakh set for a month when Rajneesh briefly re-entered the picture, and saying he did not want to act. The shift came later, during an industry strike, when Khanna walked 14 km from Shivaji Park to town and was mobbed. For the unit, that was the moment the comeback became real.
The article leaves readers with a portrait of a star who was, at 40, still living in a modest club room because his sons lived next door. It is a useful reminder that a comeback is not only a box-office story; it is also a story about who a star needs to be off screen.
Source: India Today
Comments