Raj Kiran in the 1970s
Credit: WikiCommons
Remember yesteryear Bollywood actor Raj Kiran who acted in nearly 100 Hindi films? Well, my life crossed paths with his in 1996. Who would have imagined that an ordinary crime reporter of a struggling newspaper would meet a veritable film star? But I did meet Raj Kiran under very weird circumstances. I met him at the Bengaluru Central Jail.
It was an unusual day at work for me. The Prisons Department of the Karnataka Police had invited crime reporters to visit the Bengaluru Central Jail on Sheshadri Road (Now it is at Parappana Agrahara. The old premises in now Freedom Park).
As a group, we went from cell-to-cell seeing prisoners—murderers, conmen, thieves, sexual offenders, dacoits. The visit took an interesting turn when we found Raj Kiran locked up in one of the cells. However, none of my colleagues deemed the discovery worthy of a news story. I did. And I became the first to break the news the following day.
When I investigated deeper, I learned that Raj Kiran was arrested for trespassing the Puttaparthi Sai Baba Ashram in Bengaluru. He had hired a tractor and a ladder from Shivajinagar and tried to break into the ashram at night and got caught.
When I found him, he had spent a week in jail with no one to bail him out. My story was carried all over India. Ultimately, Raj Kiran’s father came to Bengaluru, bailed him out and took him back home. I went to meet Raj Kiran the day he was released. No other reporter was allowed to meet him by the police officers fearing negative publicity.
Then we went shopping for jeans—Raj Kiran and me. He took me to a garment showroom in Gandhinagar where he bought a pair of jeans and asked the salesperson for a pair of scissors and made short pants by cutting the trousers.
He wore the shorts and walked back to his hotel room with me. He stopped to buy chewing tobacco and stuffed his mouth with it. I spent nearly an hour with him that day and wrote a follow-up story that day.
Before I wrote this middle, I did some research on the Internet on Raj Kiran. His current whereabouts are unknown. He was last seen in Atlanta, Georgia, US, by his co-star, the late thespian Rishi Kapoor according to Internet sources. But I can never forget my tryst with Raj Kiran, the chocolate hero of the 1980s. He won many a heart among the young female Indian audience after Arth, and Karz. Wherever he is, I wish him well.