A true trailblazer

Bollywood buzz

Balbir Raj Kapoor, third son of doyen Prithviraj Kapoor, was christened Shashi Kapoor for the marquee. 43 years after the father, and 17 years after brother Raj Kapoor, the son has also been conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India’s highest honour in cinema.
The killer smile!

Says co-star of 11 films (Aa Gale Lag Jaa, Shaan, Kranti, Gautam Govinda, Kaala Patthar, Aandhi Toofan, Ilzaam etc.) Shatrughan Sinha, “I sincerely pray Rishi Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor keep up the family tradition in the coming years!”

Calling Shashi as a man with “a killer smile”, the actor recalls the warmth they shared with an insight into one of Shashi’s prime virtues: his punctuality. “I was always late, and one day, when I arrived, Shashi took off his belt and mock-threatened to teach a latecomer like me a lesson! I told him, ‘Shut up! You get work because of your punctuality and I get work because of my talent!’ And we both hugged and had a hearty laugh.”

Sinha adds that Shashi belonged to the elite club of handsome actors who induced fear in actors like him. “Because they were so good-looking, hamare paseene chhoot

 jaate the (we would perspire) thinking how we could ever become stars. The other kind were people like me who ‘inspired’ newcomers with the fact that when people like us could succeed, so could they.”

Sinha also recalls Shashi’s British approach of “thus far and no further”. “We never saw each other’s houses in our long association despite our bonhomie,” he says.

Shashi’s beginnings as an actor, like all senior Kapoors, was in the plays of his father at the latter’s Prithvi Theatre as a child. Notable among his films as a kid were Aag and Awara (made by Raj Kapoor) and Sangram.

The values prevalent in theatre were fast absorbed by the youngest Kapoor. Recalls Shabana Azmi, “When Shashi turned producer with the film Junoon (1979) in which I acted, he ensured that everyone from stars to technicians would stay in the same hotel and have the same food, just as it is in theatre. He was a dream producer who would magically provide whatever a director asked for — ask Aparna Sen who directed his 36 Chowringhee Lane!”

Deeming him “most deserving of the Phalke award”, Azmi adds, “He was the only artiste who pumped everything he earned back into his profession, that too in two areas that were unthinkable for a major star — art cinema and reviving his father’s Prithvi Theatre. In the former, he overspent, but with the latter, he has given actors and the city a unique institution. Shashi always was a true trailblazer. Remember, he was the first Indian actor to do foreign films, beginning with The Householder.”

It was a surreal feeling, says the actress, to co-star with him in so many films (beginning with Fakira) because she had been his fan from the age of 11. “Our families were close-knit and lived in the same Janki Kutir complex. I would get 50 paise then as pocket money, and would usually spend it on my favourite samosas. But often, I would sacrifice them to buy Shashi’s photographs, getting them autographed whenever I met him.”

Her husband, Javed Akhtar, who wrote multiple Shashi hits, recalls the actor’s warmth and discipline. “He is the first actor who made the rule of not working on Sundays! When we (Salim-Javed) first cast him in Deewaar, we fought for him as producer Gulshan Rai was not convinced how Shashi, a senior and older actor, could pass off as Amitabh Bachchan’s younger brother,” he recalls. “Shashi too had his doubts, but we convinced them both and he was superb, besides getting the most iconic line in the film, ‘Mere paas maa hai’. In most of our films, Shashi remained Ravi, with Amitabh as Vijay!”

The fatally good-looking actor with his crooked smile has now become overweight, largely indifferent to his health after his anchor and wife Jennifer’s death decades ago. Shashi had once told this writer that Jennifer, despite being a Britisher, had been his father’s favourite bahu.

“It is sad,” says Dharmendra, his Krodhi co-star, close friend and co-struggler. Stating that for him Shashi will always be the “Diamond Kapoor”, the actor is pained that film industry friendships are deep, yet victims of time. “We all want to meet each other, but cannot! Shashi is like a brother and I get emotional when I see him unwell.”
A creative mind

Manoj Kumar adds, “We struggled together and I remember him sitting on a road-roller at Central Studios and telling me that we would give each other work when we turned producers. Later, he worked in my Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, Kranti and Clerk.”

Manoj treasures so many memories. “I can speak about him for hours. Once he climbed the Haji Malang shrine near Mumbai for me, where I always go to pray for the success of my films, because I had a knee problem. He went there twice, and then drove back to Mumbai and caught a flight for the Delhi premieres of Roti Kapada Aur Makaan and Kranti.” He laughingly refers to a mock-complaint by the actor about a song in the former film. “‘Raj-saab and you pay more attention to your songs than to your actors,’ Shashi told me, but on sets, he would blindly follow my instructions.”

One part of the composer duo (Kalyanji)-Anandji, with whom Shashi shared a special rapport and collaborated in over 20 films, starting with Mehndi Lage Mere Haath (1962) and the musical blockbuster Jab Jab Phool Khile, recalls their last get-together 18 months ago with the director of these films, the late Suraj Prakash. “It was just like old times,” he recalls.

A special memory is of the actor complaining to the music duo about the “hard work of waving my arms” according to the lyrics. “We challenged him that we would give him a song in which he would not have to even lift his arm — the result was the hit ‘Kabhi raat din’ in Aamne Saamne, and he conceded defeat! We were great chums, and had known each other for years before we worked together.”

As a lead actor, Shashi began his innings with Char Diwari (1961) and became a ‘hit’ star only after Aa Gale Lag Jaa (1973) and Chor Machaye Shor (1974). He even tried his hand at reciting a few lines in songs in some of his films (like Satyam Shivam Sundaram and Suhaag), at direction (after Raj Kapoor could not take up the direction of Shashi’s last production Ajooba) and method acting (putting on all those kilos for his negative role in Utsav that he never lost) and even won a National award (New Delhi Times).
Shashi means the ‘moon’. It is full-moon time for the actor at last.