Rajesh Kumar, known for his memorable roles like Rosesh in Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, and appearances in Yam Kisi Se Kam Nahi, Neeli Chhatri Waale, and Yeh Meri Family, made a surprising choice to leave acting at the peak of his career. Troubled by the question, “What am I doing for the next generation?”, he decided to step away from the spotlight in 2017 and pursue farming. However, this decision proved to be more challenging than he anticipated.
In a recent interview with Siddharth Kannan, Rajesh revealed how he started the concept of being a “family farmer.” For this start-up idea, he called up many of his friends. He said, “A few of them subscribed to it, rest of them chose to ignore. There’s a long list of people who at first said ‘Wow, what an amazing idea’ and then ignored me. They were the people with whom I had shared screen space.” The actor then recalled selling vegetables outside his son’s school.
Rajesh got teary eyed as he shared, “After the start-up failed, I started to sell vegetables outside my son’s school. It made people think ‘He has gone mad. Why is he selling vegetables?’ It happened so that when my son saw me selling vegetables outside his school, he went to his teachers and said, ‘Would you please buy vegetables from my dad?’ He was in third grade at that time. Then all of his classmates went to different classrooms to inform them I was selling vegetables, and requested the teachers to buy it from me.”
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Rajesh Kumar got emotional as he said, “My purpose to sell vegetable outside my son’s school was to show I wasn’t doing a menial job. My purpose was to make children acknowledge that it’s a great work. My purpose was to educate the consumers and not farmers. They often ignore the hard work that goes behind growing the coriander leaves, which they often ask for free.”
Rajesh did this for five years and had debt of around Rs 2 crore. He said, “My math was not strong. I didn’t realise I was losing Rs 22 to Rs 25 per kg. There was lots of wastage too. By this time, I had incurred a loss of about Rs 12 to Rs 15 lakh. It was additional to the debt I already had of about Rs 1 crore. At this point, I thought of getting an app made to keep the transactions and orders in check, because it was getting all messed up over WhatsApp. But, after the app was created, the man who made it, betrayed me. Within three months of the app’s existence, I happened to lose a lot of money, eventually having to shut down my start-up altogether.”
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“I had to answer my friends and family, who invested in the business. I had to answer the farmers who were involved with me in the business. It all had become too overwhelming. At this point, I told myself, I will have to find a way. If not, I will die with a debt of around Rs 2 crore”, recalled Rajesh.
The actor then made a comeback with a brief appearance in Jeetendra Kumar’s Kota Factory 2, where he played the role of a Math teacher. He was also seen in Shahid Kapoor’s Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya and Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer Rautu Ka Raaz.
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