Rajat Bedi who’s been in the news for his comeback with Aryan Khan’s show, ‘The Ba***ds of Bollywood’ is producer/director Narendra Bedi’s son. For those not in the know, the late Narendra Bedi has made movies like ‘Benaam’, ‘Adalat’ which starred Amitabh Bachchan and also movies like ‘Bandhan’, ‘Jawani Deewani’, ‘Sanam Teri Kasam’ among others. In a recent interview, Rajat has opened up on how his father faced financial loss due to Rajesh Khanna‘s rivalry with Bachchan. He recalled his father’s final moments and the struggles he went through and said during a chat with Siddharth Kannan, “He died in front of my eyes. I came from school and he came out of the room and collapsed in front of me. He had become an alcoholic, he got into depression. He was doing very well but my grandfather had some liabilities of films and my father was taking care of that.”
Further, he opened up on how Khanna’s rivalry with Bachchan caused his father a huge financial loss. “Then my dad was also facing issues with Rajesh Khanna. He had started 2-3 films with Rajesh Khanna and Rajesh Khanna felt bad that my father was engaging with Amitabh Bachchan and doing projects with him. I don’t know the real story, but my father had taken the unit to Pune for one or two films, and he was waiting for Rajesh Khanna to come. For 10 to 15 days, Rajesh Khanna didn’t come and my father just closed the projects. I guess heroes at that time were problematic or something. So there were some issues between Rajesh Khanna and Papa, maybe because of Bachchan sahab or various other things. So Papa got into….”He also revealed that his father and Khanna would drink all night. He added, “Rajesh Khanna and Papa used to drink all night. I remember in my house there used to be crates of alcohol. He used to smoke, have Pan Parag, the lifestyle was terrible. Rajesh would leave him at 5-6 in the morning and all night they would be drinking.”Clearly, alcoholism also affected his father’s career. “It became so bad that when he would go for shoots… like during the shooting of Sanam Teri Kasam, he would be drinking from morning, and Kamal Haasan ji would get very upset with that because he would come on set smelling of alcohol. He was going through his journey of pain through all those circumstances.”
