While we tend to think of Shashi Kapoor as one of the best known film stars of his time, the fact is that he was always one of the outliers of his industry.
While we tend to think of Shashi Kapoor as one of the best known film stars of his time, the fact is that he was always one of the outliers of his industry. He hailed from the Kapoor clan, who believed in living life king size, but remained a sober and disciplined man. Despite his extremely good looks, for much of the earlier phase of his career, he was not counted among the top names, which included his elder brother.
In an industry known for its chaotic ways of functioning, Shashi Kapoor remained a six days a week working man; his producers knew he would not be available on Sundays. Family time was important to him and his children remained, like him, grounded.
Aseem Chhabra’s book on Kapoor brings out all these facets and discusses his films too, but why is it that after reading it, it looks more like an assembly job rather than a keen insight into this most unusual of Hindi film stars We have scores of his friends, colleagues and family members giving their own views on Kapoor, but where is the author’s voice
Most of what they say is on a familiar track and soon becomes repetitive — he was a nice guy, a generous man, down-to-earth; some of these very qualities meant that he could never be a good businessman. Kapoor, who believed in good cinema, produced several memorable movies such as Junoon (1978) and Kalyug (1981), most of which did not rake it in for him, but even when he distributed blockbusters like Bobby (1973), the financial reward remained meager.
His children — Kunal and Sanjana — who have been interviewed candidly say their father did not have business sense. For a biographer, it is manna to get strong quotes from a family member, who normally tend to speak in platitudes. But the author appears to be coy in pushing further; he interprets Kunal Kapoor’s comment, “my dad was the world’s producer!” as, “Yet, surely, this made Shashi a rare financier — one who held on this ideals and risked backing the cinema he loved ”
This is regrettably a key failing with this otherwise readable book; the reluctance of the author to touch upon anything that would show his much-loved subject in a negative light. The reader, thus, is left a bit short-changed.
Chhabra also has tended to look at early Shashi Kapoor with rose-tinted glasses. Kapoor’s forays into Ivory Merchant productions were not always successful — we may tend to look back at those films with nostalgia, but they were often bland and commercially (and critically) unsuccessful. Chhabra is offended at a review of The Householder (1963) in The New York Times, calling it “mean”, but the film even then was seen as a curiousity; at the very least, it did not do any wonders for Kapoor in the first phase of his career. We can now appreciate that Kapoor was a risk-taker, working in English language films, but that consolidated his image as being an “angrez” of sorts. None of the Merchant Ivory films advanced his standing in any major way.
If anything, Kapoor’s uniqueness lies in the manner in which he emerged in the 1970s as a huge, bonafide star at a time when actors younger than him, such as Rajesh Khanna were dominating the screen. Kapoor went into overdrive, turning out solo hits like Chor Machaye Shor (1974) and Fakira (1976) and as a partner of Amitabh Bachchan in countless movies. His understated performance in Deewaar (1975) is of course most remembered, but he was Bachchan’s perfect foil in many other masala films. That was his busiest phase, leading his elder brother, frustrated at not getting Shashi Kapoor’s dates, to calling him a “taxi” available for hire by any producer.
Chabbra hits his stride in the second half of the book and it is his portions on Utsav (1984), Ajooba (1991) and New Delhi Times (1986) that are the best reads. He also reminds us that in the final phases of his career, Shashi Kapoor did many medium and small-sized foreign films, all of them without the hype associated with the modern crop of actors who get roles abroad. But then Shashi Kapoor was never about hype. Happily, Chhabra brings in Jennifer into the book and recounts their charming love story — she was a pillar by his side through her life.
Shashi Kapoor, for this reviewer, remains one of Hindi cinema’s most underrated actors. While his Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965) kind of roles and his many other roles as an urbane, white suit wearing city boy with his jerky dance movements and fabulous smile remain in the memory of old timers, his intense interpretation of a modern day Karna in Kalyug is a touchstone of low-key acting. Chhabra understands that, but his over-reliance on others to say it all (accompanied by a bewilderingly long list of footnotes in each chapter) dilutes the impact. (Also, some fact-checking would have helped — Awaara (1951) was not his first screen appearance — he had already done four others films by then) and Hemant Kumar did not later use the tune “O Nodi re” from Siddhartha (1972) in Kohraa (1964); the latter was produced before Siddhartha.
The book, nonetheless, rekindles memories of a terrific actor who belonged to another time in more ways than one — more than a star from the 1960s and ‘70s, he is also a gentleman of the old school.
