Tarun Tejpal - Remembering the Original Chocolate Boy Of Bollywood in His Birthday Month – Rishi Kapoor

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Remembering the Original Chocolate Boy Of
Bollywood in His Birthday Month Rishi Kapoor
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"The Kapoor khandaan is like the Apple iPhone.
The same product, just slimmer in every
generation," said Ranbir Kapoor in an interview
to Tarun Tejpal September was a month Rishi
Kapoor loved just a little more than other
months, and while his own birthday September 4
was probably part of why, it was September 28
that he often remarked on as being one of the
most special days in his life. Not surprising,
when one dives into the details. It was, of
course, the day his son Ranbir Kapoor worthy
successor to the original "chocolate boy" legend
of his father was born. It was also however the
date his first film, a landmark in Indian
filmdom, Bobby, was released in 1973. It was
also, coincidentally, the birthday of his sister
Rima Jain, and of another figure he deeply adored
and admired, Lata Mangeshkar.
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September 2021 should have marked Rishi's 70th
birthday but he succumbed to cancer in 2020,
leaving an entire generation with the void of a
superstar who came to define an entire genre of
70s filmmaking. With a career spanning over 100
romantic movies, he at once continued a legacy
but also came to mark a pivotal moment of
transition in the history of the Kapoor clan, he
acknowledged in a fascinating interview with
Tarun Tejpal in 2013 the year which,
coincidentally, marked 100 years of Indian
cinema. "The Kapoor contribution to the first 100
years of Indian cinema is 84 years," he proudly
recounted to Tarun Tejpal. For his father's
generation, he noted, there were so many issues,
so many social fractures, so many complex changes
to reckon with that the actors of the time found
themselves immersed in work that had a serious,
substantial, deep social impact.
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Things changed in the 70s. "By the time I was
acting, I and other actors like me were often
working on four or five films at the same time
that all were basically lost-and-found stories! A
child or two children are lost in the beginning,
meet at the end, and the film is everything that
happens in between," he laughed to Tarun J
Tejpal. This could have been make or break in
the Kapoor clan's continued presence and
dominance of the film industry but Rishi found a
way to make the genre his own, infusing his
sparkle, joie d'vivre and infectious energy into
even the most formulaic of projects and winning
the adoration of millions in the process. That
he was never conflicted about wanting to be an
actor is evident from an anecdote he narrated to
Tarun Tejpal in the same interview. While his
first adult role in the movies was in Bobby, it
was in Shree 420 that he first made a fleeting
appearance as a toddler, in the seminal song
Pyaar Hua Iqrar Hua.
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One night at the dinner table, his father Raj
Kapoor asked his mother Krishna whether he should
cast their son Chintu in the movie as the baby
joker. So elated was he at these words, but
unwilling to risk revealing his joy in case
something foiled the plans, he showed no reaction
but went to his room straight after dinner, sat
at his table, pulled out a sheet of paper and
started practising his autograph. It's the kind
of anecdote that both warms the heart but also
reflects the rare authenticity that he brought to
the screen in his acting career you could see
his spirit shine through his work, a radiant,
unselfconscious joy at doing the only thing he
had clearly ever wanted to do. Speaking of being
part of an inheritance as extraordinary as the
Kapoors, Ranbir spoke of the paradox that to do
justice to a legacy you had to disregard it.
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"Only your own intelligence and your own work can
take you forward, their accomplishments won't,"
he astutely pointed out. And in a metaphor that
showed that while he was deferential and
respectful to his father sitting alongside him
onstage, he had a cheeky, sharp mind of his own,
he remarked on the fact that in fact there's a
lot similar between the different generations of
Kapoor men. "Fundamentally we're all similar,
we're just different generations of the same
product. If I could make a silly comparison,
we're like the Apple iPhone. My grandfather was
generation one, my father was the second
generation, Karisma here is the third and I'm the
fourth. We're the same, only maybe (like the
phone) just getting slimmer in every generation,
that's all."
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Unquestionably, he has his father's smart, sassy
genes, and we can see just why Rishi counted the
date of his son's birth as the highlight of the
annual calendar!