It is no secret that the late actor and politician Vinod Khanna was a follower of the popular Acharya Rajneesh also known as Osho, while he still operated from his ashram in Pune in the late 1970s. It was filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt who introduced Vinod to the Osho’s philosophy and commune.
“I was instrumental in taking him to the Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh ashram, as he was known those days. He was yet to rechristen himself as ‘Osho’. The aftershocks of the sudden passing away of his mother had emotionally devastated him. That kind of worked as a catalyst in his decision to come with me to the ashram. He started reading his books and listening to his discourses on tapes. Finally, we both became sanyasis. We both would be saffron-clad those days.”Mahesh Bhatt
While Mahesh Bhatt got disillusioned by life at Osho’s ashram after two years, Vinod stayed on. In fact, when the godman relocated to Oregon in 1980, the actor packed up and followed him.
“I moved away but Vinod, for some reason, was persuaded by Rajneesh to stay on. So much so that when Rajneesh left for the US, Vinod accompanied him. He came back after that circus collapsed and was under depression. Being a stubborn and a resilient individual, he pulled himself out of that quagmire and had a revival in career, but he couldn’t get back the same fire.”Mahesh Bhatt
Here are a few photographs of Vinod Khanna during his time as a gardener at Bhagwan Rajneesh’s communes, in Pune and Oregon.
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