Category: Homage

Here once was a colossus cultural phenomenon nonpareil — SPB — a peerless performer par excellence whose magical, mellow voice saw legions of listeners drawn like bees to a honeycomb, as if a Pied Piper has cast a spell upon them to transport them to an Elysian world.

Like many of his ilk in his time, he has left us with a memory of his humungous achievements in this mortal life—4,000 plus songs, spanning over a chequered career of 50 sing-sing prodigious years. Covid may have consumed the great SPB at the ripe, still-active age of 74, but his rich, luminous legacy shall live forever. His life he led less ordinary. Led by his self-belief motto: I love my life. If possible, I do not want to die. I have a passion for life.

Indeed, if only the Almighty Creator was as gracious and benevolent enough, the rotund, ever infectiously smiling super singer would still be busy recording, hopping from one studio to another, or performing live; bringing sunshine into the lives of people, up, close and personal. But then, trust one to be unable to defy one’s own date with destiny. It is, and was, not to be. Virtually battling for over a month with the deathly Corona, the songster who soothed many a soul with his rapturous renditions finally gave in, leaving the music world, both in India and the world, in deep mourning.

So, Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmayam, known more so as simply SPB, or Balu, faded away into the horizon, after living a fulfilling, fulsome life nestling in the hearts every human being by the songs he sang, by the peace and quietude they brought into the lives of ordinary mortals.

A musician, playback singer, television anchor, music director, actor, dubbing artist, film producer, and a roly-poly powerhouse, perfectionist songster, he was not just phenomenally versatile. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Tiaraed with a Padma Shri and a Padma Bhushan as crown jewels of an illustrious and fulfilling career, he was an iconic institution all by himself. [/highlight]

SPB was a polyglot who had a flair and felicity for effortlessly rendering songs in 16 different languages. In addition to singing in the four major South Indian languages—Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam—SPB was also a virtuoso in Hindi, a terrain that even the likes of the exalted Kamal Haasan has not been able to conquer.

And [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]records were like second nature for SPB, be it the Guinness Book of World Records for his 40,000 songs, or the coveted six National Film Awards for Best Male Playback Singer, or the recording of 21 songs in Kannada for composer Upendra Kumar from 9 am to 9 pm, or the 19 songs in Tamil and 16 songs in Hindi that he recorded on a single day.[/highlight]

Of course, his dad being SP Sambamurthy, a Harikatha artist, it was only to be expected that this lad from a Telugu Brahmin family from Nellore, the erstwhile Madras Presidency, would take the trail less trodden and not the traditional ones of an engineer or a doctor or such other academic led careers.

Despite enrolling himself in an engineering college, he gave it up, stricken by typhoid as well as total disinterest. The call of music was strong in the impressionable boy, so he pursued the study of musical notations, and very soon, while still a youth, he began his long and successful journey of winning music awards, one after the other.

The decisive turn came in 1964 when he bagged the top prize at a music competition for amateurs as a leader of a light music troupe with an upstart/undiscovered Ilaiyaraaja as his chief guitar and harmonium accompanist. At his debut audition, SPB rendered Nilave Ennidam Nerungadhe, a song of his peer, a contemporary and equally-erudite crooner, PB Srinivas, who was more in the mould of Manna Dey and Mohammad Rafi.

Brilliant with his boggling range of eclectic expressions and enthralling cadence that music directors expected of him and sought him for, he lit up the musical world, sticking true to the destined philosophy “I planned to be an engineer. Then music turned the course of my life. I realised not to plan and let things play out for me.” That was SPB.

SPB made his debut with Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna (1966), a Telugu film. Eight days after that first recording, he sang for a Kannada film. However, it was the 1980 Telugu film Sankarabharanam and his classical Carnatic rendition of the songs that pitchforked him into the big league. Despite not being classically trained, SPB’s impeccable aesthetic music sense and renditions fetched him his first of four National Film Awards for Best Male Playback Singer.

For the Carnatic-oriented songs in Saagara Sangamam (1983) and Rudraveena (1988), Ilaiyaraaja and him won the National Film Awards for Best Music Director and Best Male Playback Singer, respectively. SPB was a super success in the cinema of Hindi too. He received a National Award for Best Playback Singer for Ek Duuje Ke Liye.

In 1989, he became the singing voice of the young-as-a-yuppie upstart Salman Khanin Maine Pyar Kiya. In 1994, his rendition for Didi Tera Devar Deewana in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! turned him into the Dil Deewana for the audiences of the North of the Vindhayas, firmly cementing his place in Mumbai as well as the recess of India’s cow belt. Indeed, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]SPB became the offscreen voice of the bad boy of Bollywood in the same manner as his equally ersatz senior Kishore Kumar had earlier become Rajesh Khanna’s singing alter ego.[/highlight]

AR Rahman’s score in Mani Ratnam’s Roja ensured SPB would be sought after if his alto voice was required to niftily render the soothing lyrics in all its nuances and notes.

As if playback singing was not enough proof of his virtuousness, you had the legend lending his voice to Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Vishnuvardhan, Salman Khan, K Bhagyaraj, Mohan, Anil Kapoor, Girish Karnad, Gemini Ganesan, Arjun Sarja, Nagesh, Karthik, and Raghuvaran in as many languages as they acted in, proving that dubbing too came as easily as singing a song in the studio or in front of a packed auditoriums the world over.

A prodigious, youthful and zestful singer blessed with that rare artistry in several languages, his evergreen songs that embellished the Indian movie marquee for half a century has left a treasure trove of glistening gems, such as Aayiram Nilavae Vaa for MGR in Adimaippenn, Iyarkai Ennum Ilaya Kanni for Gemini Ganesan in Shanti Nilayam, Tere Mere Beech Mein Kaisa Ye Bandhan  for Kamal Haasan in Ek Duuje Ke Liye,  Pehla Pyar Hai for Salman Khan in Hum Aaapke Hain Kaun,  and Dorakuna Ituyanti Seva and Saamaja Varagamana for JV Somayajulu in Shankarabharanam.

With a mirthful, mischievous laugh here, and an angst-ridden sigh there, playful, and pert, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]SPB has lent a uniqueness to his repertoire,  rendering songs that are an inseparable part of the common man’s everyday lives.[/highlight]

The words of the Bard of Avon William Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage… And one man in his time plays many parts” ring so true for SPB. The velvety voice with its multifarious mellifluousness that brought meaning to our existence will never be stilled. Like many of the other greats before him whose works still resonate and reside with us, quite many of the innumerable songs of this gentle genius genie have become a part of our collective conscience and shall for a very long time becalm and be a balm to soothe the void.

 

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Header pic: The then-Union Minister Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu presents the centenary award to SPB at IFFI-2016. Also seen is Shri Laxmikant Parsekar & Shri Mukesh Khanna, CM of Goa, & Chairman of the Children’s Film Society of India, respectively, in 2016. Source: PIB

 

Dev Anand was Dorian Gray, Peter Pan and matinee idol all rolled into one. There may only be a handful of actors or filmmakers anywhere in the world whose career spanned 7 decades. Dev Saab, as he is still remembered, was one of the most pos­itive persons I have ever met. His effervescent charm, his enthusiasm and his optimism were contagious. I met him when I was in college in Delhi in 1969 and at the end of that fortuitous meeting I had made up my mind that film was the career option for me. Dev Saab not only facilitated my entry but became a mentor. I was merely one of many people who owe their career to him.

Dev Anand came to Mumbai in 1944 with a graduate degree, a bagful of dreams and a charming smile. His first job was at the office of the Government’s censor department, where he read letters from soldiers to their families back home. However, he was clear that his future lay on the silver screen. His older brother, meanwhile, was nursing his own dreams, even as he worked elsewhere, at BBC and Doon School, before landing in Mumbai to pursue his own celluloid dreams. Chetan the more cerebral of the two had links with the left cultural movement and both brothers briefly got involved with the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). Dev Anand however kept studio hopping until he attracted the eye of DN Pai, one of the founders of the legendary Prabhat Studio in Pune. Dev Anand was immediately signed as an actor and made his debut in PL Santoshi’s Hum Ek Hain (1946), a film in which director Guru Dutt worked as an assistant. The duo would go on to forge an enduring friendship. After a few hiccups, Dev Anand, starring opposite Kamini Kaushal, got his first hit via Ashok Kumar in Bombay Talkies’ Ziddi (1948), written by Ismat Chugtai and directed by Shaeed Latif. Incidentally this film marked the debut of Kishore Kumar as a singer under composer Khemchand Prakash. The film turned out to be a hit. Dev Anand the star had arrived.

In 1949, he set up his production house, Navketan, with his elder brother, Chetan (Dev Anand would leave in a few years and his place would be taken up by his younger brother, Vijay). Chetan had by then made the richly-acclaimed film Neecha Nagar, which had won the Grand Prix at the first Cannes Film Festival in 1946, sharing the prize with David Lean’s Brief Encounter. Navketan, fueled by the money Dev Anand the actor earned working outside, got its first hit in 1950 with Guru Dutt’s debut film Baazi (1951). Navketan by then, along with RK Films, was to become an important institution in modern Indian Cinema; both lasted for decades. Navketan would become a nursery of talent. Guru Dutt, SD Burman, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Raj Khosla, Vijay Anand, Sahir Ludhianvi, Jaidev, Johnny Walker, Biren Naug, Yash Johar, and later Neeraj, Shatrughan Sinha, Zeenat Aman, Zahida, Tina Munim, Jackie Shroff, Richa Sharma, Tabu and many others would spring from this creative garden. Navketan has made over 40 films, of which Baazi, Taxi Driver, Kala Pani, Kala Bazar, Hum Dono, Guide, Tere Ghar Ke Samne, Prem Pujari, Hare Rama Hare Krishna and Des Pardes are considered landmark films. Over 100 well-known filmmakers, writers, and technicians were nurtured at Navketan.

Dev Anand remained active till his last breath. His later films may not have met with success but his zest for life, his passion for cinema and his keen eye to hunt talent remained alive and kicking.  Among all his contemporaries his films still remain on the rerun circuit on TV and the internet. Songs from Navketan Films are still hummed by five generations. In my long association with him I have seen him at music sessions with composers like SD Burman, RD Burman, Laxmikant Pyarelal, Rajesh Roshan, Bappi Lahiri and others. He also had the pulse to pick the right melody and poetry. He followed global trends and while abroad would visit all kinds of concerts, stage performances and museums. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Dev Anand was also that rare star in India who replied to letters and answered phone calls. He loved eating but was largely a frugal eater. However, contrary to popular perception, he did not follow a strict diet or exercise regime. He just took care of his body and mind.[/highlight] He had a special affinity for mountains and never missed an opportunity to shoot at different mountain locations in India and abroad.

Not many people are aware that Dev Anand was a truly renaissance man. From his early days he befriended writers like Agyei, Pearl S Buck, Raja Rao, Manohar Malgaonkar, KA Abbas, Somerset Maugham, Irving Stone, Ismat Chugtai, Kamleshwar, and Kamala Das. Kailash Vajpayee once talked about his meetings with Manto. In the early days of Navketan, classical musicians like Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Pannalal Ghosh, Samta Prasad, Alla Rakha, and Halim Jaffer Khan played in his songs. He had hosted eminent directors like Frank Capra and Michelangelo Antonioni, and actors like Shirley MacLaine and Martin Sheen. He had visited the Cannes, Berlin and Moscow film festivals. He was an avid reader, and had a large collection of books on different subjects. He was also a patron of the arts. He was fond of travelling and his films often featured unusual locations both at home and abroad.

Dev Anand the actor also stands out in several films especially early in his career. In fact, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Dev Anand was the first major star and producer to make noir cinema in India.[/highlight] Films like Baazi, Taxi Driver, House No 44, and Kala Bazar are some of them. His performances in Ferryman, Nao Do Gyarah, Baarish, Paying Guest, Asli Naqli, Hum Dono, Tere Ghar Ke Samne and of course Guide stand out. He always encouraged young talent. Countless artistes, technicians, writers and directors from Navketan went on to make hugely successful careers.

Unfortunately, towards the last part of his career, he became self-indulgent and his choice of stories was questionable. My sense is that if he had directed films on others’ screenplays, he would have made far better films. His command over the medium and his craft was good. Only his writing was mediocre.

A lot of us who interacted with him will always remember him with warmth. From kings and prime ministers—He had interacted with almost all the Indian leaders as well as several foreign heads of states—to the next-door neighbors, everyone has only good things to say about Dev Saab. He never spoke ill of any of his colleagues—He spoke fondly of Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Nutan and all his costars—or others. His cinema will live on for generations. He was a rare gentleman who was made of the stuff that dreams are made.

In an interview during his television days, Sushant Singh Rajput was asked about his favourite book. He sheepishly replied that he wasn’t into reading, but if he were to pick one he’d pick his Physics text book, because he didn’t understand it at one go, and had to spend a lot of time with it.

Half a decade later, he had launched a Twitter handle exclusively to discuss books with fellow bibliophiles. Most of his recommendations were books on Quantum Mechanics and the nature of existence. He was espousing Nietschze and Einstein to his friends. His Instagram bio read “Photon in a double-slit”, referring to a famous experiment about the wave behaviour of light and matter. A lot had changed. As if he was on a different quest than when he started.

It all probably begun when he was studying engineering.

Sushant was an introvert, and the world doesn’t take kindly to introverts. The writer of this piece can say this from personal experience. Introverts are often seen as arrogant and people hate them with a vengeance. One has to adopt a veneer of gregariousness in order to be accepted. It was during his engineering college days that Sushant discovered how acting was a more efficient way for a shy person to communicate, and speak their mind. Naseeruddin Shah has spoken about this on numerous occasions, and so has Irrfan Khan. Acting, especially acting on stage, is a tool for introverts to express themselves.

First Shiamak’s dance troupe and then Barry John. Theatre had captured his imagination, relegating academics to the background. Sushant had been bright and perceptive. He had aced almost all the exams he wrote. A great academic career lay ahead. Anyone in their right mind would stay the course, play by the rules. But there was a fork in the road and [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]he chose the road less traveled by.[/highlight] Sushant dropped out of college and plunged into the world of theatre.

Nadira Babbar’s theatre group Ekjute became his home and he pranced about on the stage of Prithvi Theatre, squeezing a bit of himself in every performance. He was spotted at one of the plays, and landed a role in Balaji Telefilms’ Kis Desh Mein Hai Mera Dil, and then moved on to Pavitra Rishta with his breakout role as Manav. He was Manav and Manav was him. He was finally a star. It was the golden age of soaps and TV stars had a formidable following. Sticking around would mean money, fame and continued success. Another fork in the road—and once again, Sushant chose the untrodden path. At the prime of his TV stardom, he chose to leave it all behind and ship out to UCLA to learn acting.

A chance encounter with Mukesh Chhabra swiftly got him to the sets of Kai Po Che. And he worked harder than ever before. Even in a film with Rajkummar Rao who had already worked with the Anurags and Dibakars of the world, a boy from the saas-bahu universe received rave reviews. “He has all the trappings of a star”, said Taran Adarsh in his review. Rajeev Masand, for once, agreed: “But it’s Sushant Singh Rajput, making his film debut as Ishaan, who it’s hard to take your eyes off. The actor has an indescribable presence, and it’s clear from his confidence and distinct likability that a star is born”. Raja Sen said, “Rajput gives a new meaning to the expression, ‘the idealism of the youth’”.

Remember Shuddh Desi Romance and PK? They were his second and third movies, respectively. I had to go back to his filmography and verify this because by this time Sushant had seasoned so well that it was inconceivable that he wasn’t 8 or 9 films old. It was all the more evident in his fourth, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy. Dibakar Bannerjee was as perfectionist a director as it could possibly get, and going against all conventional wisdom, he had cast a 29 year-old mainstream actor to play a Bengali detective from the 1940s. But Sushant prepped like a maniac. Bannerjee showed him Satyajit Ray’s Chiriyakhana (in which Uttam Kumar plays an older Byomkesh)—his brief was for Sushant to extrapolate from this a young man, unsure of himself, who’s destined to grow old into Uttam’s version of the character. In the resultant film, Sushant Singh Rajput was a sight for sore eyes. It was like a feral animal had been let loose. He was primal. But this well-crafted gem of a film didn’t get the audience it deserved.

He was also being offered Paani with Shekhar Kapur. He was elated. In the company of artists like Dibakar and Shekhar, his mind was expanding. He would befriend Anand Gandhi, the maverick director of Ship of Theseus, who shared his enthusiasm about science and the secrets of the universe.

M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story is probably Sushant’s most widely accepted film. He did play Cricket at school but to play a master cricketer he had to be really good at it. Ex-cricketer Kiran More coached him for months and by the time he was shooting, Sushant Singh Rajput was almost a cricketer himself. He got it to a T, even the iconic Helicopter Shot. The film was a huge success. He received critical acclaim, and won over hardcore Cricket fans as well. This was Sushant Singh Rajput’s fifth movie overall. I know it’s stupid to compare, but [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Amitabh Bachchan’s fifth movie was Reshma Aur Shera, Dilip Kumar’s was Nadiya Ke Paar, and Aamir’s fifth was a snake-filled spectacle called Tum Mere Ho.[/highlight]

Sushant Singh Rajput had a powerful telescope—a Meade 14 LX600—in his study, a few feet away from the books on philosophy and quantum mechanics that he consumed so intently. One would imagine that as he enriched his inner world, his distance with the real world around him was growing longer and longer. He was an “outsider” in almost every sense of the term. And I’m not talking about the industry here. We live in a world that scoffs at the word “intellectual”. It’s almost a bad word, an abuse. Those who think deeply are a tough burden for our society to bear. True talent is so unbearable that we make life unbearable for them. Remember Guru Dutt? Ritwik Ghatak, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Saadat Hassan Manto, the list is long.

Sonchiriya, Abhishek Chaubey’s follow-up to Udta Punjab, was about dacoits of the Chambal ravines in the 1970s. Sushant played Lakhan Singh, a young member of a gang who seemed to have his heart in the right place. It was a fantastic film—gritty, realistic and true to its roots. By his own admission, it was his most “different experience”. He, like everyone else in the film, was speaking the dialect of Bundelkhand. His co-star Manoj Bajpayee explained later how relentlessly this fellow actor from Bihar would work on his craft, trying to perfect his gait, his run, his emphasis on words. Manoj also spoke about the books of Quantum Mechanics on Sushant’s side table. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Sushant carried his telescope to the sets, spent hours gazing at the stars and invited everybody else to join him.[/highlight] He chatted with Manoj on a host of subjects ranging from Astronomy and Astrology to Physics and human conflict. While this childlike curiosity prevailed off camera, Sushant played the dacoit with unparalleled ferocity. But like all his great work, the film didn’t get audience support. Nobody saw it.

Nitesh Tiwari was making a campus film after the astronomical success of Dangal. He was looking for an actor who could play a college-going kid and the father of a college-going kid with equal ease. Sushant Singh Rajput seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Chhichhore was warmly received, and became the second film of his, after MS Dhoni, which grossed more than Rs. 200 crores at the box office.

[highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]In a career spanning 7 years, Sushant Singh Rajput had 10 releases, of which at least 5 were memorable films. That’s a 50% strike rate, a staggering number. Throughout the world, barely a handful of actors will probably be able to meet those standards.[/highlight] Which doesn’t essentially mean he was better than all of them. He was a sincere craftsman, and he chose his projects incredibly well.

We Indians are one of the most hospitable peoples on this planet, but we are also capable of great cruelty. Tying crackers on the tails of dogs is a popular pastime of kids in small towns. People use all manner of sticks and twigs to poke at animals in cages. But we reserve the most despicable savagery for our fellow humans.

Two of Shushant’s pet projects were Shekhar Kapur’s Paani and a space movie called Chanda Mama Door Ke for which he actually trained at NASA. Those projects were considered unviable since Sushant’s credibility to shoulder big budget projects was suspect. But before training our guns at Bollywood lobbies and dropping the N bomb at the slightest provocation, it may be important to stop and introspect why we choose the banality of Baaghi 2 and Dhoom 3 over honest, experimental films. And it’s this culture of rejecting what’s different and off the beaten path that may have had a bigger hand in the ostracization of Sushant Singh Rajput and the likes of him. And in our angry reaction to his death, we are probably unknowingly pushing other Sushants over the edge.

 

 

Sushant was being treated for clinical depression, a condition that is unsurprisingly common today. Many amongst us suffer in silence. And there need not be a “reason” for it in the conventional sense. It’s crucial to be cognizant of this. If there is one thing we should teach ourselves in the wake of this tragedy, it is this: “Be kind”. It will avert plenty of heartburn, and more such tragedies.

[highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Here was a sensitive, erudite and curious man, wise beyond his years.[/highlight] But it’s sad that it took his death for the world to realise this. To paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore, “Moriya proman korilo je shey morey nai” (“He proved by dying that he did not die”).

 

Rishi Kapoor — Tujh mein kya hai deewane
A Bengali film buff growing up in 1980s small town India was overwhelmed with a plethora of influences. On the one hand there was the Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani universe. Sunday afternoons were about “regional cinema”, where one was gradually getting exposed to names like Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Aravindan. And the works of Ray, Ghatak and Mrinal Sen were like a rite of passage for any Bong kid. We were of course bored to death with some of it but unwittingly, it was all seeping into our bones.

On the other extreme end were Sunday evenings and VHS sessions. While Amitabh Bachchan was like this benevolent God who kept on giving, he was less ‘accessible’, only to be found on video cassettes. For some reason, the national broadcaster rarely showed his films. The weekly shows on Sunday evenings (and later Saturdays and Tuesday afternoons) were reserved for Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Joy Mukherjee, Biswajeet and… [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Rishi Kapoor[/highlight]. While Bachchan had completely engulfed us, Rishi was the only other actor we truly enjoyed watching on screen. That smile could melt mountains. Bachchan with his swag and super-heroic invulnerability was a natural pull for kids our age, but Rishi managed to keep us engaged without any of these shenanigans. Because he was, contrary to popular (including his own) perception, a great actor even back then.

Adaakari

The mainstream Hindi film industry (“Bollywood” as a term wasn’t in circulation yet) was experiencing its worst phase back in the 1980s. So much so that many were declaring it dead. The middle class had all but given up on this form of entertainment, barring reruns on TV and video rentals. Nobody went to theatres anymore. Precious few films were able to recover their investment, even fewer reported hits at the box office. In the middle of this dry spell, Rishi Kapoor had a blockbuster in Nagina (1986).

It was around this time that Rishi appeared in an interview for a Canadian television channel, which remains his only televised interview from that time.

”Jo cheez badi routine ho, usey aap ek novel tareeke se karke dikhaaye, uss cheez ko main bahut maanta hoon kyonki main khud ek spontaneous kism ka actor hoon”

He was, of course, referring to his approach to acting. Nobody at the time bothered too much about “the craft”. Nobody spoke about it, nobody wanted to hear about it. But here Rishi Kapoor, a “commercial cinema” actor, was talking about his “craft”. And this brings to light another aspect that was unique about that era.

Like in the rest of the world, the cinema of India was undergoing a shift in the 70s. A commitment to realism and what was seen as an emphasis on substance rather than form, gave rise to the Parallel Cinema movement. While its foundations were laid in the 50s, the movement gained wide acceptance in the 70s and 80s with the likes of Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Saeed Mirza, Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul doing their thing. This created a schism between the “commercial” cinema of the day and the so-called “art films”. These categories were neatly divided and the filmmakers and patrons of either kind of cinema would scoff at the other. But a curious fallout of this was that the so-called commercial cinema actors—like Rishi Kapoor—were seen with derision. Since they sang and danced and fought, they were perceived as bad actors. And that is what Kapoor was referencing in his interview. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Mainstream Hindi cinema has had a lingua franca of its own that it has evolved over the years. And while it cannot be blamed for making the audience “think”, it has left indelible impressions on the Indian psyche. It exists in its own Universe, with its own Reality. Loud, gesticulative acting is a hallmark of this kind of cinema. But there are some actors who have—while staying true to this universe—figured out their own “method” of infusing their performances with a certain sense of naturalism. Sanjeev Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Rekha and Rishi Kapoor are prime examples. Rishi for one has never dabbled in serious cinema—with the exception of the very unsure Ek Chadar Maili Si – and nor did he actively partake in the Kapoor family tradition of theatre.

But pick up the silliest of titles from his filmography, and Rishi’s acting in it is characterised by a sincerity that is present in some of his better known work as well. Consider Tawaif (1985), a B.R. Chopra film where Rishi plays Dawood, a wannabe writer who ends up having to live-in with a courtesan when she lands on his doorstep one night. Playing the template Muslim youngster commonly seen in “Muslim Socials” those days, not only is his Urdu diction flawless, he plays the part with a felicity mostly seen in actors trained on the stage: using space efficiently, interacting with props, economy of movement, impeccable timing. And the same elements can be seen in Ravi Tandon’s Rahi Badal Gaye (1985), where he plays dual roles, one of them visibly older. Rishi uses merely his body language to convey one person to have seen more years and the other being more effervescent and youthful. And then there was Duniya (1984), where he was pitted against Dilip Kumar. All these were uni-dimensional characters cut-out from cardboards. He almost never had meticulously written roles. But Rishi played them with a vitality not even expected of him in these parts. If you see him in these roles, it is inconceivable that he was doing multiple shifts a day, hopping from set to set.

And that’s why back in 1987 when his colleagues never spoke of such things, Rishi said in that interview: ”Main koi designed, created ya koi engineered acting nahi karta hoon. Main inn cheezon ko maanta nahin hoon. Jaise cheezen aati hain woh kar leta hoon, jo nahin aati woh nahi kar paata..”

Doosra Janam Rishi Kapoor

Around the year 2000, a new generation of filmmakers were bringing about a change in the way mainstream cinema was made. The parallel cinema movement had all but died, leaving offsprings in the shape of prodigious directors like Anurag Kashyap, Imtiaz Ali and Vishal Bharadwaj. Ashutosh Gowariker and Farhan Akhtar were demonstrating that socially conscious and realistic cinema can be made without alienating those seeking entertainment in the movies. The two cinemas were coming closer and closer until inevitably, they were fused together.

In this new world, “commercial actors” like Rishi Kapoor who had never set foot inside FTII or worked with Gulzar or Hrishikesh Mukherjee, should have found themselves at sea. But something unexpected happened. It was like he had suddenly been set free. All those years of animated gestures and loud dialogue deliveries and the flamboyance seemed to have been a solid grounding for the eccentric parts he was expected to play now, especially Romi Rolly in Luck By Chance (2009), Santosh Duggal in Do Dooni Chaar (2010), Rauf Lala in Agneepath, and the grandfather in Kapoor & Sons (2016). Notably, the new breed of directors employing him now had all grown up on the same commercial masala films Rishi Kapoor was a part of. They were all film buffs—and smart ones at that, so they knew how to play to his strengths.

But this wasn’t a 2.0. It was the same set of skills, he was just employing them more consciously. He was more liberated. He took flight. Like he wrote in his autobiography ‘Khullam Khulla’, acting to him was ‘putting in effort to show effortlessness’. Unlike most movie critics and reviewers, Rishi Kapoor’s fans were not shocked or even surprised at what he was able to do now. We always knew. We were just having a ball seeing him have a ball.

This year he was about to reinterpret Robert De Niro’s role from The Intern, and team up with Juhi Chawla after 20 years for a film called Sharmaji Namkeen.

And the man had hardly even reached his prime. For all we know, Rishi Kapoor was just getting started.

 

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IMDB link of Rishi Kapoor

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