Vinod Khanna ? Any Risk Any Time

As the days draw closer and the tough Vinod Khanna anxiously waits for the release of "Risk", the film with which he expects to make "a come back to stay", I think of all the risk he has taken all through his a life and career, risks which he has toyed with and triumphed over?

Vinod Khanna the handsome young man was almost on the brink of joining his father's business for a living what was then called a "fast life" when Sunil Dutt met him at a party in South Mumbai. Dutt, the filmmaker saw something very magnetic about Vinod's personality, went up to him and asked him if he was interested in taking up acting as a career. He still doesn't remember how or why he said yes to the respected Dutt sahab. He went through all kinds of tests and Dutt finally decided to cast him as the villain in "Man Ka Meet", a film in which he introduced three other new comers, his brother, Som Dutt, a pretty young girl called Leena Chandavarkar and Ranjit. Vinod made a very strong impact and was accepted as a young villain by the industry even though the film did not do very well.

He was flooded with offers from some of the best banners and filmmakers. A time came when he was so popular as a bad man that when the hero finally ended up beating him to pulp, his fans hated the hero for the way he was treating Vinod. They loved Vinod the bad man more than the good man. It was something very rare, something which no other villain before him had been able to do.

It was this love of the audience for Vinod that tempted some adventurous filmmakers who were willing to take risks by signing him to play the hero in their films. The first director to take the risk was Gulzar who was making his debut as a director with "Mere Apne", a film with which he gave new life to other young actors from the F.T.I.I., like Shatrughan Sinha, Danny Denzongpa, Asrani and Paintal and made Meena Kumari immortal in what was destined to be the last role of her memorable career. The scene where Vinod sings the song, "Koi hota jise hum apna kehete yaaro" marks his time to make it as the leading man, the hero for the films planned in the future. The films with him as the hero succeeded and established him as one of the best heros of Hindi films of the time. It was a calculated risk he had taken which had paid him rich dividends.

Till a time came when he was running a neck-to-neck race with Amitabh Bachchan who was his only real competition. With "Amar Akbar Anthony" both the audience and the industry was willing to hand over the throne to him. But something extremely unexpected happened to Vinod at the peak of his career. He came under the spiritual spell of a Bhagwan who was just coming up in the world, a Bhagwan called Rajneesh. His new found Bhagwan captured his body, soul and mind. Vinod first showed signs of renouncing the world when he started wearing saffron robes and a huge, mala round his strong neck and carried tapes of the Bhagwan's teachings and discourses wherever he went listening to them whenever he had the time and almost forced others to listen to them. One night he took what was his greatest risk when he just bid farewell to the industry, to his family, to his flourishing career and India and fled to Oregon in America where his Bhagwan had his own heaven. He surrendered to his Bhagwan and his Bhagwan accepted him and gave him a new name, Swami Vinod Bharati and gave him the divine job of working on the garden of his paradise on earth. Vinod Khanna, the superstar to be was now happy working as a "maali" for the Bhagwan who ruled like an emperor with huge palaces all over and twenty four Mercedes Cars at his personal disposal. And Swami Vinod Bharati forgot all the materialistic attractions of life which included his wife Geetanjali and his two little sons, Rahul and Akshaye and the industry which was willing to give him everything he wanted on a platter of platinum. For twelve long years he worked as a dedicated and devout maali, grew a long grey beard