How Rishi Kapoor made us fall in love with him khel khel mein

Rishi Kapoor had all the odds against him. He had been born into an illustrious film lineage, if not THE film family. The family of Prithviraj and Raj Kapoor and Shammi and Shashi Kapoor. He was good-looking almost to the point of being pretty, and made his adult debut at a time when romance in Hindi films was about to wane out and action dramas were to be the order of the day. This was 1973, when Raj Kapoor launched his youngest son Rishi in the blockbuster teen romance Bobby.

Bobby was a hit. It was a lavishly made Raj Kapoor film, with all the right ingredients. Wide-eyed love, the freshness of its songs and a find of finds in the young Dimple Kapadia. In fact, it could be argued that Bobby was overall more Dimple’s film than Rishi’s, what with her youthful and oozing sexuality (which Raj Kapoor played to the hilt as was his forte), her innocence and her arresting screen presence.

It was not for nothing that Raj Kapoor had named the film Bobby, the film that was the launching pad of his youngest son Chintu. So while Bobby broke box-office records, it could have gone either way for Rishi thereafter. His launch was a stupendous one, but it was a story of mushy love at the wrong time, and it was heavy on the heroine as, many of his later films would be. And yet, with these two very same ingredients, Rishi Kapoor marched on, stayed on and made himself a name to reckon with.

Two other films of Rishi Kapoor instantly come to mind. Prem Rog, again made by his father Raj Kapoor and Damini opposite Meenakshi Sheshadri. Both were women-centred films, with the script focussing on the lead female character. In Prem Rog, it was Padmini Kolhapure’s character of the ostracised young widow who is supported and nurtured by Rishi Kapoor’s character. And Rishi’s role in the film is almost secondary in the way the film completely revolves, frame by frame around the heroine. Yet, in the end, he finds his place in the sun, only and only by virtue of an empathetic performance that does not count the number of frames but by the depth of his portrayal of this lovestruck young man who will go any lengths to ensure the happiness of his beloved.

In Damini too, Kapoor not only had a script that was centered on the female protagonist, but also another and more heroic male protagonist in Sunny Deol’s character, the lawyer who battles in court for Damini. Yet as the husband who toes his family’s line before finally coming around to stand by his wife, Kapoor gave a very fine performance. Of a man who is torn between the woman he loves and the rest of his family. This character that almost abandons his wife to her fate somewhere in the film’s middle, is marked by some degree of weakness of character, and for an actor of Kapoor’s standing, it needed some conviction to have taken it up.

It was the same conviction that he showed throughout his career, whether in his portrayals in multi-starrers like Amar Akbar Anthony (AAA) or Kabhi Kabhie, wherein he was pitched with the biggest stars of his time. And through each of these films, he created that immensely lovable and energetic persona of the young man in love, and who could romance his girl in style. Whether in the Parda Hai Parda number from AAA or Tere Chehre Se Nazar Nahi Hatti from Kabhi Kabhie, Kapoor, and especially the Rishi Kapoor-Neetu Singh pair of films like AAA, Rafoo Chakkar or Khel Khel Mein, stood forth like a bit of a relief against the heavyness of Bachchan’s persona that came to dominate the screen in these years. Rishi Kapoor swam against the tide and stayed afloat by doing something that was frequently undervalued as ‘dancing around trees’ and was supposedly fluffy.

Rishi Kapoor was the romantic hero whose films gave an edge to his leading ladies, occasionally by design, like in his father Raj Kapoor’s films. Or sometimes, by virtue of his innate ability to co-habit alongside the dynamism of his heroines, whether it was Sridevi in Nagin or Chandni or Divya Bharti in Deewana. The Payeliya song in Deewana clearly belongs to the much younger Divya Bharati, whose screen presence was something to reckon with, and yet Rishi Kapoor is like an immensely comforting presence alongside her. The dafli-playing romantic hero who is ever ready to give his all for the girl he loves. And more importantly, that pleasantness of his screen persona did not perforce get balanced out by action or a mandatory male machismo as in the case of Bachchan or some of the other stars of his time. He stayed the carefree lover boy for the greater part of his film career.

Rishi Kapoor reinvented himself in his later career with roles more suited to his years. And there again, he showed his versatility. It was as if people had suddenly discovered Rishi Kapoor the actor. However, Kapoor himself had made the case in his interviews that dancing around trees was no mean task, and the main oeuvre that he leaves behind stands forth as a genre in itself. A genre spanning more than two decades which is versatile, trendy, fun-loving and wherein the larger points sometimes get made without taking life so very seriously... Khel khel mein.

Rishi Kapoor made us fall in love with him. The way he played his fingers on his dafli or did a qawaali. Or how he came back from the dead to avenge love’s betrayal in Karz. Never apologetic of anything, whether his body weight in the age of sculpted heroes, or his screen persona.

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