Photo Credits: pg 2- lead
Veteran actress Rekha's personal life has always been under the spotlight especially due to her scandalous affair with the much married Amitabh Bachchan and her husband's suicide. And now a new biography Rekha: The Untold Story, written by Yasser Usman has revealed a few more interesting details about her life.
A shocking excerpt from the book talks about how a 15-year-old Rekha was kissed forcibly while on the sets of Anjana Safar as the unit members whistled and cheered on. According to the book, Kuljeet Pal (the director), Raja and Biswajeet (the lead actor) had hatched a plan, with Rekha as the unsuspecting victim. 'As soon as the director Raj Nawathe said 'action', Biswajeet took Rekha in his arms and pressed his lips on hers. Rekha was stunned. This kiss had never been mentioned to her. The camera kept rolling; neither was the director ordering 'cut' nor was Biswajeet letting go of her. For all of five minutes, Biswajeet kept kissing Rekha. Unit members were whistling and cheering. Her eyes were tightly shut but they were full of tears,'. Biswajeet later maintained that it was not his fault, that he was merely working on the director's instructions.
The book also talks about her marriage to Mukesh Agarwal which 'gave Rekha, who was born out of wedlock a legitimate surname finally'. While the initial days were happy ones, Rekha soon realised that they were very different people and discovered that Mukesh used to take several pills a day. 'Rekha could see that something was troubling Mukesh. And then, one day, a gloomy Mukesh looked deep into her eyes and said, 'There's an AB in my life too.' As Rekha took a step back to think things through and stopped taking his phone calls, a depressed Mukesh hanged himself and this led to her being pubicly shaming her. She was called a witch and a Black Widow and the her face was blackened on Sheshnaag posters.
Rekha’s sexual openness, also finds mention in the book as the actress is said to have stated that, “It is sheer fluke that I have never got pregnant so far.” And this is said to have been the reason behind the failure of her first marriage to Vinod Mehra with 'a violent confrontation with her mother-in-law on the landing outside Vinod’s apartment, before Rekha could even cross the threshold'. She was later projected as a “man eater” and a “nymphomaniac”.
Another much talked about Sindoor and mangal sutra appearance at Risha Kapoor and Neetu Singh's wedding also finds it's way into the book. She then went on to bravely chat with Amitabh Bachchan as eyes followed her while Jaya is said to have 'bent her head and let the tears roll'. ' Rekha later cleared the air: that evening, she had come to the reception straight from a shoot. The sindoor and mangalsutra she was wearing were part of her get-up for a film, which she had forgotten to remove,' the book mentions.
In fact, the book goes on to talk about her Jaya Bachchan stopped Amitabh Bachchan from working with her. "At an award function some time ago, I’d recited a few lines. Everyone imagined they were meant for him. But actually, it was for her," said Rekha. The lines that she recited were as follows."I looked at you, you turned your face away. Why? You feel you are badly off, but can’t you see my position is worse? There is deep hurt in your gaze, but can’t you see that the wounds in my heart are deeper than your look?" The actress then went on to reveal that following the trial show of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar which upset Jaya, everybody in the industry told her that Amitabh wouldn't work with her again. 'Everybody else informed me about it but he didn’t say a word on the subject. When I tried to question him about it, he said, 'I am not going to say a word. Don’t ask me about it'."
