May 2, 1988. Despite his asthma having made it inadvisable for him to travel, a weary Raj Kapoor soldiered on to the Siri Fort to receive his Dadasaheb Phalke award. As he was accepting the award, an asthma attack overpowered him and he had to be rushed to the AIIMS . A month later, he was dead. In death, as in life, his king-sized persona played itself out in full public view.
The life of Ranbir Raj Kapoor, spanning 63 years and about 65 films, has been extensively analysed for content, topicality and style. His career, which peaked during the heady days of the Nehruvian era with Awara , and troughed at the time of the post-Nehruvian gloom with Mera Naam Joker , is part of modern Indian history. His popularity in former Soviet Union is stuff of legend. His association with the leading ladies of his time like Nargis, Padmini and Vyjayanthimala, the thin line between the personal and the professional getting completely erased at times, has made for numerous gossip articles. His obsession with nudity — he called it muqaddas uriyan (sacred nudity) — is discernible to anyone visiting his films. So what space can a biography — published first in 1991 and re-published in 2002 and then in 2017 — aspire to fill? This book by Ritu Nanda, Kapoor’s daughter, who made appearance as a toddler in Shree-420 , claims to be a “complete study” but leaves an average cinephile disappointed at the vast gulf between its potential and actual achievement.
Nonetheless, the narrative style of the book deserves appreciation. It collates material available in Kapoor’s own words and is interspersed with reflections from Nanda and his family members. It feels like Nanda is hand-holding her father as he revisits his past. Only that the father here does not delve into the inner recesses of his personality and hence the finished product reads more like an introduction to Raj Kapoor for those who do not know him.
In Kapoor’s own lifetime, there was some review done of his tradecraft through books like Prahlad Aggarwal’s Aadhi Haqeeqat Aadha Fasana . Much later, Madhu Jain’s The Kapoors touched on some difficult topics like Kapoor’s complex relationship with his father Prithviraj , but its vast scope ensured that limited space could be devoted to the two paterfamilias. It also gave some introduction to the Madonna-whore complex afflicting characters in many of his films.
However, none of the books on Kapoor have answered some vital questions. As a result, the artiste who lay behind the veneer of the showman is yet to be fully-understood. Kapoor had an excellent sense of music , one that made him visualise songs like Ghar Aaja Mera Pardesi . However, we only have a cursory knowledge of how he developed this acumen and how it evolved from the grandeur of Awara to the rusticity of Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai and beyond. It is interesting that the ‘Waves of Danube’ music remained a constant refrain in most of his films. Where could Kapoor’s love for this tune have originated? Also, why, after a few attempts at singing like in Dil Ki Rani , did the audio visionary never pursue that path?
It is known but not appreciated that the showman in Raj Kapoor owed his image to a multitude of minds — the likes of Nargis, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and Shailendra, Radhu Karmakar, Shankar-Jaikishan and Mukesh. Nanda’s book makes only a cursory mention of these.
We also don’t know much about what role Prithviraj’s theatre — in some of which Raj had been a participant — and his socialist outlook towards life played a part in shaping Raj’s own cinematic vision. Most of all, Kapoor’s relationship with Khwaja Ahmad Abbas — the mind behind Awara , Shree 420 and Mera Naam Joker — is one ignored subject Nanda could have chosen to explore. How did Abbas, a Marxist, a prolific writer, an intellectual and an agnostic to the core, come to form a fruitful partnership with Kapoor, an apolitical person, a romantic and an extremely superstitious individual whose reading habits did not extend beyond Archie comics? What were the core principles that guided their association? Was it just commercial interest?
Further, not much has been written on Kapoor’s projects with other directors. Abbas himself directed him in films like Anhonee and Char Dil Char Rahein . Ramesh Saigal and Hrishikesh Mukherjee gave Kapoor his best-acted roles in Phir Subah Hogi and Anari . Kapoor’s approach to his own films vis-à-vis those of the other directors remains unexplored.
A lot of recollections presented by Nanda are already in the public domain. What is not is the craftsmanship that made the blue-eyed, woolly-headed dreamer, a true auteur. Without a detailed look into his artistry, books on him are bound to be guilty of repeating the broad outlines of his public life, and that would be equivalent to doing the great actor-director a grand disservice.
Raj Kapoor: The One and Only Showman ; Ritu Nanda, HarperCollins, ₹899.
