Akshay Khanna's roles as 'Rehman Dakit and Aurangzeb': When the villain's role in a film becomes bigger than the hero's

 Akshay Khanna's roles as 'Rehman Dakit and Aurangzeb': When the villain's role in a film becomes bigger than the hero's

It usually happens that when a film is announced, the first thing that the moviegoers see is who the main character of the story, i.e. the hero and heroine, is, and the social media machinery of the production company also uses the names of these main characters to get publicity.

But if you are a film enthusiast, then you must know that there are some villains who not only steal the film festival by acting well, but often they also get more recognition than the hero and heroine.

Take an example from the past: decades ago, Amjad Khan, i.e. Gabbar Singh of the film Sholay, said, "How many men were there?" Even today, the dialogues of Jay and Veeru (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra) are more popular than the story of Anil Kapoor's disappearance in the film Mr. India.

Even decades after the release of these films, the trend of giving more importance to negative characters than the hero and heroine has not ended.

The latest example of this trend is the film Dharundhar, in which the hero is Ranveer Singh, but the villain of the film, ‘Rehman Dakit’, i.e. Akshay Khanna, is seen everywhere more than his character in the film.

Not only is Akshay Khanna’s dance on an Arabic song popular on social media, but one of his dialogues, ‘Rehman Dakit’s death is very butcher-like’, is also being seen in every language.

Akshay Khanna’s case is more interesting because he does not believe in self-promotion and prefers to stay away from the media glare and interviews.

‘An actor is nothing without a good team’

In July 2017, I got the opportunity to interview Akshay Khanna. I asked him why his films come out so late?

He replied, ‘Look, being an actor is not an easy job. An actor is the most sensitive and dependent person in this world. Writing and music composing can be done in isolation, but an actor cannot do anything alone.’

‘We need a good director, writer, cameraman and other good actors. Without a good team, we are nothing.’

‘I don’t feel like talking’

After the interview, I asked Akshay if any of my questions bothered him. He immediately replied, ‘No, I just don’t feel like talking.’

I was stunned by his bold answer. He was there to promote a big film, that too after a gap of years, but despite this, he had no interest in exaggerating himself in the media.

Akshaye Khanna was not seen much in the promotional events of Dharundhar, but after the release of this film, he became the most viral.

He had complete faith in his acting and his team and this faith became the secret of his success in this film.

‘Hair loss hurt confidence’

Perhaps Akshay Khanna was more upset by the early hair loss than the flops of his films and his career was also affected by it.

The hairstyle of any hero in the Indian film industry means a lot, but Akshay’s hair was falling very fast at a young age.

In 2001, Farhan Akhtar’s film ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ showed Akshay Khanna in a new look: modern, stylish and mature.

Through this role, he got a lot of popularity among the urban moviegoers.

One thing was very clear from his style in this film that Akshay’s hair was falling very fast.

Other actors take the path of hair transplant to avoid this problem, but Akshay did not do so for some unknown reason.

A few years later, he also talked about his hair in an interview with Menk Sharma: ‘Hair loss hurts your confidence. It started happening to me at a young age and it’s like you take away the fingers of a piano player.’

The year of comeback

After ‘Dil Chahta Hai’, Akshay Khanna did several films with Abbas-Mustan and Priyadarshan and he reached the heights of fame once again with Hungama, Humraaz, Niqab and Race.

However, in these films too, he was not the solo hero, i.e. the only lead character.

At that time, Akshay realized that perhaps he should do more supporting roles than the lead roles.

Akshay is perhaps the only Indian hero who appeared without hair in films like Ittefaq and Dreesham and still managed to focus the attention of the audience on himself.

While people are talking about the role of Rehman Dakit in the film Dharundhar, at the same time they are forgetting that Akshaye Khanna played the role of Aurangzeb in the blockbuster film ‘Chhawaa’ and this role was one of the most powerful roles in the history of the Indian film industry.

Dharundhar and Chhawaa means two successful films in one year. It would not be wrong to say that 2025 is the year of Akshaye Khanna’s comeback.