Rekha, she was once the queen of Bollywood. She ruled the hearts and the Bollywood with her looks and noted for her versatility. She is often acknowledged as one of the finest actresses in Hindi cinema. It was the late 70’s when Rekha got the mainstream recognition. She has appeared in over 180 films in a career spanning over 40 years. What separates her from other actresses of that era is that she played strong female characters in the era when films were not women-centric. Apart from mainstream cinema, she had appeared in the parallel cinema too.
Rekha’s personal life has always been filled with many mysteries, she married a Delhi-based industrialist Mukesh Aggarwal in 1970. A year later, he committed suicide, leaving a note, “Don’t blame anyone”. In 1973, it was rumored that she was married to Vinod Mehra. However in 2004, she denied it in an interview.
Since the tragedies which happened in her life, Rekha has preferred being a loner and recluse. She doesn’t attend Bollywood parties, she doesn’t do TV shows, like most of the celebrities of the bygone era do. She hardly gives any interviews or gives his fans a sneak-peek of her personal life.
Yasser Usman has written a book titled “Rekha: The Untold Story”. This book covers all the scandals, controversies, unknown and unheard stories of personal life. It also covers her troubled relationships in a detailed way. The book sheds light her affairs, especially the most popular affair with Amitabh Bachchan.
The most famous Bollywood incident when Rekha showed up at Rishi Kapoor’s wedding with sindoor on her forehead. All the guests and the media were surprised and shocked, they couldn’t stop wondering if Rekha had got secretly married. She wore a shining white saree and a mangalsutra-sindoor combo, she went up to Big B and started chatting with him. This made Jaya Bachchan very furious over Rekha.
The famous Silsila Jodi had caused a rift in the Amitabh-Jaya relationship. Some reports suggest that Jaya had even prevented Amitabh from acting alongside Rekha. According to an interview with Stadust magazine in 1978, Rekha had some shocking and surprising revelation about her affair with Amitabh.
She blamed Jaya Bachchan, calling her the main reason behind the drift between her and Amitabh, asking Amitabh to never work with her. She said,
At an award function some time ago, I’d recited a few lines. Everyone imagined they were meant for him (Amitabh). But actually, it was for her
She also mentioned the hatred and angst of Jaya Bachchan towards her,
Once I was looking at the whole [Bachchan] family through the projection room when they came to see the trial show of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. Jaya was sitting in the front row and he and his parents were in the row behind her. They couldn’t see her as clearly as I could. And during our love scenes, I could see tears pouring down her face. A week later [after the trial show of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar], everybody in the industry was telling me that he has made it clear to his producers that he was not going to work with me. 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.
Now after many decades, the untold pages has been opened, the unspoken stories has been told. Maybe finally we could understand and know this enigma.