Rahul Roy was once a star, albeit briefly when his film Aashiqui hits bull’s eye in 1990. The songs of the film were a rage and Rahul was the heartthrob of the nation. It all faded quickly. Now 59 and still recovering from a brain stroke in 2020, Rahul recently attended the wedding of a mathematician RK Srivastava’s niece in Bihar, lip-syncing to the popular track ‘Saanson Ki Zaroorat Hai Jaise’ from Aashiqui.
It came as a shock to see the former star reduced to a pale shadow of his starry self.
Examples of stars like Bharat Bhushan, Pradeep Kumar, Lalita Pawar, even the legendary Meena Kumari (who spent her last years bedridden in the servant’s quarter of a bungalow she had gifted to her sister) are legion.
Filmmaker Kalpana Lajmi didn’t have money to pay her medical bills during her final years. Friends had to pool in and bail her out.
This writer reached out to Rahul Roy to tactfully ask about the circumstances that forced him to attend a wedding in Bihar.
Rahul spoke hesitatingly. “They were keen that I attend. In Bihar, they are all fans of Aashiqui to this day. The songs are a craze. I only had to attend and lip-sync to my song. I had a brain stroke in 2020. We all know what medical bills are in this country.”
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Filmmaker-thinker Mahesh Bhatt, who launched Rahul Bhatt in Aashiqui, ruminates on the ephemerality of stardom. “At 77, I’ve seen careers rise, crash, reinvent themselves under new names. But some images don’t age — they settle into the bloodstream of a generation. Rahul Roy is one such image. The boy who once leaned into Anu Agarwal under that coat in Aashiqui —that quiet, unguarded gesture became the country’s first kiss. Not for spectacle. For sincerity. It didn’t just make him a star. It gave a generation permission to believe in love. To dream in silence. Years later, he walks into a wedding. No drama. No thunder. Just a man, older now, lips moving gently to the playback of his own past. The world searches for tragedy. But this is not tragedy —this is audacity.”
Bhatt added, “Do you know how hard it is for someone past their prime to return to the room where they were once worshipped —not to relive it, but to acknowledge it? Most run from what they once were. He walks toward it. Because man is memory. And when memory is worn with honesty, not vanity, it is not desperation —it is dignity. They don’t call him now for novelty. They call him because some echoes, carried with grace, can still make a room pause. So let him lip-sync. Let him take his quiet cheque. If today’s stars dance at weddings for millions, why can’t Rahul stand for a moment the nation still remembers? He does not seek to become that boy again. He simply allows the moment to breathe — once more. He no longer lives in that moment —but that moment still lives. So today, I honour not nostalgia — but Rahul’s courage to stand beside it without flinching.”
The post Mahesh Bhatt defends Rahul Roy lip-syncing at a Bihar wedding: “If today’s stars dance at weddings for millions, why can’t Rahul stand for a moment the nation still remembers?” appeared first on Bollywood Hungama.
