Rekha reigns as a multi-faceted actress who is Indian cinema’s most loved face. She has essayed legacy characters leaving the audience with unforgettable memories of ‘Umrao Jaan’, ‘Khoon Bhari Maang,’ ‘Zubeida’ and so much more. Till date, she drapes elegance effortlessly in six-yards. However, it was no cakewalk for her to carve a niche for herself and ensure to not be pigeonholed by her characters. There is one particular incident that wrenches the heart on how a teenager was forcibly kissed and left to cry.

Despite how awful it sounds, it is true that a 15-year-old Rekha was caught off guard when her co-actor pulled her towards him and kissed he without consent.

Rekha was born as Bhanurekha Ganesan to Pushpavalli and Gemini Ganesan. Her childhood years are riddled with familial complications. Owing to this, she took upon herself to build a career and support her mother and sisters right from the age of an teenager.

As a 15-year-old, she got her first role in Hindi film which was then titled as ‘ Anjana Safar’ opposite to 32-year-old Biswajit Chatterjee. However, the movie was delayed by 10 years due to censorship and was released as ‘Do Shikari’. Upon its release, it stirred controversy due to the titular kissing scene that made it to the cover of magazine.

In interviews and in her biography, ‘Rekha: An Untold Story,’  she revealed how she was not informed about the scene and rather tricked into it. The director and the actor knew about it was she who was left traumatised. Reportedly she cried for hours and later was consoled to return to the set.

In 2018, Indian cinema experienced the #MeToo movement wave when hundreds of names were allegedly for harassment or misconduct. During one such interview, the Bengali actor was asked about the controversy and the revelations by Rekha. The actor justified his act by putting it on the director and saying that he was just following the instructions of his director, Kuljit Pal, who further put it as the requirement of the scene. Reportedly the scene was rolled untill 5 minutes.

Due to the a decade of delay for this movie, her film ‘Sawan Bhadon’ was released first marking it her official Hindi debut on screen.

After the release of ‘Do Shikar’, it created a chatter about  scene which was not common during the notions of that era. However, it did not perform well at the box office.