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.”