In a country where actors end up being rubber stamp politicians most of the time, veteran actor Vinod Khanna was a welcome exception. He joined the BJP in 1997 and contested elections in 1998. I was only 15-years old when I met him the first time. He had won the Gurdaspur seat and was in my hometown, Amritsar, to visit the Golden temple and meet his BJP counterparts. He obliged everyone with pictures and autographs. It was his image as a cine star that got him all attention. Nobody would have guessed that one day he would conveniently slip into the character of a seasoned politician, and be a game changer in the state. In the next few years, his repeated victories ended the political career of Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder, a Congress leader and political scion who had remained undefeated for decades.
I met him again in 2014; this time as a photojournalist. I was part of the team that covered his Lok Sabha poll campaign. Dressed in a red t-shirt and aviator glasses he looked every bit of the onscreen hero we grew up watching, but what bowled us over was his modesty and humility. Unlike most cine stars or political honchos, Khanna met us with open arms and drove us to Pathankot from Gurdaspur. "Please don't be amused. Driving rejuvenates me. It's therapeutic so I love doing it," he had told us. The two-hour long journey made us see him in a new light. The moment he took to steering wheel he switched on the stereo and drove as he heard Osho's preaching all the way through. "You might find it boring, but it gives me peace. I have no time to meditate or go for intense self assessment, so I listen to this whenever I get time. I believe that good words get etched in your subconscious mind and seeps into your acts," he had explained.
The formula probably worked for him as unlike many other politicians he did not speak about election calculations or political vendetta, but about how a road or flyover was making difference to people. He knew every bit of when was the road sanctioned or built, or which village lacked water or got it or where school still needed to be upgraded. "My constituency became my film set where I was expected to act like a hero and change things. So I took my role and went ahead and seem to have done a good job, which is judged every five years. I am not scared or jittery of elections. Strangely I get same nervous feeling that I used to get before every release during my initial days. I think it is the passion at work and I hope that my heart throbs with it till my last breath," he had said.
