Movie queens don’t fade away. They simply reinvent themselves. And every reinvention of Rekha has been a voyage of discovery for this ultimate glam-goddess, who in many ways defined and still defines screen-allure and stardom. However, many people in the film industry think of Rekha as a phoney.“Everything about her, from her husky voice to her walk to her seemingly profound statements on life, love and existence in her cautiously orchestrated interviews is a sham,” an actress once told me. And I wondered why the vehement reaction?Could it be envy or was Rekha simply a victim of her own image? I got a chance to meet her years ago when I was young. So was she.It wasn’t easy. My initial attempts to get through to her were stonewalled by the pompous declaration that Rekha only did interviews with editors.Alas, I had never gravitated towards that mahogany desk in the pen-pushing hierarchy. If I knew I would need to be an editor to meet Rekha, I would have surely tried my luck in those directions. Finally, a lot of persuasion from a mutual friend, who knows Rekha only too well, I was granted one hour of her precious time at her Bandra office.I vividly remember my meeting with Rekha for a very special reason. Just before meeting her a magazine editor had thrown some very nasty comments my way. By the time I reached Rekha’s office I was in a fairly foul state of mind.She walked into the room in a white Salwar-kameez, her face devoid of all makeup, and sat behind her over-sized glass-top table. As the sun glided gloriously down into the sea behind her, Rekha’s reflection fell on the table like the sun toppling into the sea.I still remember that moment. It’s frozen in my memory as the ultimate representation of her personality. I suspect no one knows the real Rekha, not even Rekha herself. Her cultivated husky voice peels off when she’s not on her guard. But those moments are very far and in-between.There’s this constant exploration of the “real Rekha” that goes on between the actress and her hand-picked journalist-friends. Too bad, I’m not one of them.The one interview that I did with her was according to her, a failure.“He didn’t understand me,” she later told a mutual friend. Now I realise what she meant. To Rekha , her mask is both a protecting shield and a tragic face of stardom. She wants it on, but she also wants it peeled off, so she would feel like herself again. Even Rekha doesn’t know who that self is.The shelf life for the self is renewable only if an individual snatches off the mask periodically to look at herself in the mirror long and hard. What does Rekha think about when she’s alone? Whom does she see when she looks in the mirror? Does she enjoy her own stunning beauty as much as us the gawkers? These questions would be preposterous if applied to someone as down-to-earth as Raveena Tandon. A beautiful face. But not self-consumed.Rekha has undergone too much stress as a person, persona and a professional to remember the original self. At 15 she was a gawky plump, dark and oily teenager from Chennai trying her luck in Mumbai. Force-kissed by Biswajeet in a film long forgotten. Producers weren’t kind to her. The wounds never healed. But stardom came to Bhanurekha as Rekha within a year of her arrival in Mumbai.Producer-director Mohan Sehgal took her under his wings and made her a star in Saawan Bhadow. Decades later they met at the premiere of Sanjay Bhansali’s exquisite Hum …Dil De Chuke Sanam. Then approaching 80, Sehgal congratulated his erstwhile protégée for her performance in Sanjay’s neo-classic. Rekha smiled wistfully. “That wasn’t me in the film, Mohanji. That’s a new girl Aishwarya Rai.”Though she started by mimicking Mumtaz and Sharmila Tagore in her early films like Elaan, Duniya Ka Mela (wherein a certain struggler called Amitabh Bachchan was thrown out and replaced by the hot-and-happening Sanjay Khan) and even Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Namak Haraam, Rekha blossomed overnight with Dulal Guha’s Do Anjaane and Maneck Chatterjee’s Ghar.That’s when the “real” Rekha was born on screen even as the person behind the mask grew more and more distanced from reality. Rekha’s third-coming was in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khubsoorat where, doing a takeoff on her favourite actor Amitabh Bachchan, she created a blithe and believable personality. Singing RD Burman’s Kayda kayda (a tune which incidentally pre-empted Kuch na kaho in 1942: A Love Story) Rekha broke every rule of star power with this heroine-oriented comedy.Her fourth innings started with Yash Chopra’s Silsila. The film turned her into an icon.There’s something incomparable about Rekha. Even in her state of self-imposed solitude, she remains uniquely seductive. I once tried reaching out to her on her birthday. Her ever-faithful companion and secretary Farzana took all my compliments on her behalf.I can still her mocking laughter when I suggested we meet during my brief visit to Mumbai.“Dream on,” Rekha advised me.