Do you remember this iconic song of Raj Kapoor ji —
“Har dil jo pyaar karega, woh gaana gaayega,
Deewana senkdo mein pehchaana jaayega.”
These timeless lines perfectly capture the essence of Raj Kapoor — the showman of Indian cinema whose films celebrated love, music, and humanity. His soulful songs, meaningful stories, and unforgettable characters made him not just a filmmaker but an emotion that still connects generations.
Had Raj Kapoor been alive, today he would have turned 100. To commemorate Raj Kapoor’s 102nd birthday, which falls on December 14, 1925, we reproduce this article by Jyothi Venkatesh — a rare interview with him that first appeared in The Hindu dated June 12, 1988, 37 years ago, as a tribute.
Raj Kapoor, one of the last surviving film moguls in India, died in the Intensive Care Unit of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi after a four-week battle for life. The eternal romantic nomad of Awara and the clown with a bleeding heart who serenaded grandiloquent lines about life and death under the dome of a circus in Mera Naam Joker, vacillated between life and death in the capital from May 2, 1988, before the end came exactly a month later.
The youth of today may remember Raj Kapoor only as the man who made films like Ram Teri Ganga Maili, Prem Rog or Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Middle-aged people remember his performances in films like Sangam, Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai and Mera Naam Joker, which were masterpieces of their time — iconic films that changed the face of contemporary Indian cinema. His film Bobby, starring his son Rishi Kapoor, even today remains a big draw at the box office.
Not many are aware that Raj Kapoor, who had a chequered career spanning forty years, actually made his debut as an actor in a film called Balmiki, in which he played the role of Narad. It was Kidar Sharma’s Neel Kamal that presented Raj Kapoor as the romantic leading man on the Hindi screen for the first time, way back in 1947, the year India attained her Independence. Raj Kapoor was paired in the film with the then rage of the nation — Madhubala. Before being elevated to the status of a leading man, believe it or not, Raj Kapoor had served as an apprentice to the versatile late director Kidar Sharma. On several occasions, Kidar Sharma had even given stinging slaps to his bumbling assistant, as Raj himself had confessed to this correspondent sometime back.
Ranbir Raj Kapoor was the eldest among the three sons of the late doyen of the Hindi stage and cinema, Prithviraj Kapoor. Raj, Shammi, and Shashi Kapoor grew up in a modest middle-class household in Matunga, Mumbai, which was then known as Bombay. Right from his early childhood, Raj Kapoor evinced a lot of interest in the stage. In fact, the Kapoors nurtured the growth of the Prithvi Theatre under the tutelage of Prithviraj Kapoor.
Raj Kapoor’s tryst with art began with the Prithvi Theatre, way back in the early 40s. Raj had a keen sense of music even then and, in tandem with Shankar and Jaikishen, he used to sing on stage to keep the audience engaged before the plays began. Before landing the role of Narad in Balmiki, Raj did a stint as a production manager in Bombay Talkies and learned the ropes of filmmaking at a very young age. At 24, he managed to save enough money to launch his first film Aag as producer, director, and leading man.
Aag starred Nargis, Kamini Kaushal, and Nigar Sultana. However, it was Barsaat with Nargis and Nimmi that proved to be the turning point in Raj Kapoor’s career. It was a runaway hit that grossed massive profits and established R.K. Films as a reliable banner. Raj made the lovable character of the roadside tramp in Awara a memorable one in the hearts of millions of cinema-goers — not only in India but also in the Soviet Union, where even today the popular song Main Awara Hoon is hummed in several languages.
Raj knew how to penetrate the minds of his audience and impact them. He had the pulse of the audience in his outstretched palms. He dealt with the chemistry of love in his films and seldom faced failure. With different heroines in different films at different times, Raj Kapoor created history. He believed in using his personal relationships with his heroines to extract memorable performances from them. Whether it was Padmini, Vyjayanthimala, Nargis, Zeenat Aman, or Dimple, Raj succeeded in giving his heroines a larger-than-life image. There were hundreds of girls ready to give their right arm to work in a Raj Kapoor film.
In fact, during the last three years of his life, before his untimely demise, Raj had been seriously looking for a new girl to play the title role in his ambitious project Henna, a love story between a Pakistani girl and an Indian boy from a traditional family. Even though Raj was afflicted with an incurable bout of asthma, he never lost hope. At several film functions, I spotted Raj Kapoor climbing the stage and gasping for breath. He breathed cinema till the day he received the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke Award from the President of India for his contribution to Indian cinema — the very day he fell seriously ill.
Whether it was Shree 420, Bobby, Mera Naam Joker, or Sangam, Raj Kapoor’s films were defiantly autobiographical in their treatment and vibrant in their presentation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Raj Kapoor’s films are a genre by themselves. To Raj Kapoor, his father Prithviraj served as a great inspiration.
Raj owed a great deal of his rise to fame to his father. When Raj told his father he would rather take up a career in films than pursue his graduation, Prithviraj Kapoor readily agreed. Similarly, Raj never compelled his sons Randhir, Rishi, and Rajeev to pursue studies after matriculation. Raj was known for the explicit sexual candour in his films. He often bared the female anatomy in his movies — for example, Padmini in Mera Naam Joker, Vyjayanthimala in Sangam, Dimple Kapadia in Bobby, Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili, and before that Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
Once, Raj Kapoor candidly admitted in an interview with me that the sexual candour in his films was inspired by his early adolescent experiences. “My father Prithviraj Kapoor was a great actor with deep insight into human characters and greatly enjoyed his role as a warm and friendly father. When I was very young, he showed me Man to Man, Andy Hardy’s film series produced by MGM, in which Mickey Rooney and Lewis Stone played father and son, treating each other as equals. Even when he went to Sumatra and Bali, he presented me with a female nude painting with a note that read, ‘Sorry, Sonny, I couldn’t bring you a live one.’”
Raj always gave breaks to his assistants. He made Aan with his chief assistant Raja Nawathe as the director. His film Jagte Raho was directed by Shambu Mitra, while Amar Kumar directed Ab Dilli Door Nahin. Prakash Arora directed Boot Polish, while his cameraman Radhu Karmarkar directed Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai. Raj Kapoor believed in quality rather than quantity. He never worked on more than one project at a time.
Even as a sought-after actor, Raj restricted his assignments and was very choosy. The total number of films he acted in was around one hundred. In fact, Raj once mocked his brother Shashi Kapoor and Zeenat Aman in front of me at Loni Farmhouse in Pune, while working on Satyam Shivam Sundaram, for signing far too many films and “working like taxis round the clock.”
Raj was short-tempered, but his fury never lasted long. As a matter of policy, Raj never sold any of his films to Doordarshan for telecast, as he was unhappy with the meagre payments offered as royalty to producers. “If Doordarshan can dare to charge us producers ₹35,000 for telecasting a song and dance number in Chitrahaar, why should we let them telecast our films for peanuts?” he rightly argued. When I brought to his attention that Madras Doordarshan had clandestinely telecast Bobby on a Saturday afternoon, he was furious and ordered his advocate to sue Doordarshan and claim ₹40 lakhs as compensation. The case went on for nearly a year before Raj accepted their apology and withdrew the case.
Raj always made it a point to appreciate talent. I remember the day he hugged Kamal Haasan at the premiere of his maiden Hindi venture Ek Duuje Ke Liye in Bombay and predicted that he would conquer films as an actor. Today, Kamal Haasan is a renowned actor after stellar performances in several films, including Nayakan. In fact, Raj Kapoor was keen to direct the Hindi version of the Telugu hit Swathi Muthyam with Kamal Haasan, but was put off by the massive price quoted for the Hindi rights and abandoned the idea.
I fondly remember the times when his PR person, the late Bunny Reuben, used to call me on my landline and tell me that Raj Saab wanted to meet me, along with my senior mentor and his favourite journalist Devyani Chaubal, at his R.K. Studios for a chat every six months. With Devyani, fondly known as Devi, I used to attend every birthday party of his at R.K. Studios and participate in the revelry. I was only 22 then, working as an Accounts Supervisor at Hotel Oberoi Sheraton in Nariman Point.
We used to meet him by 5 p.m., and he would keep us engaged with stories of the good old days — his favourite leading ladies like Nargis, Padmini, Vyjayanthimala, and more. He would show us reels from his earlier black-and-white films at the preview theatre upstairs, then offer us scotch at his cottage bar inside the studio, followed by dinner. He would even ask his chauffeur to drop us home all the way from Chembur to Worli, where I stayed in those days. Devyani Chaubal lived at NSCI, also in Worli.
Raj Kapoor is indeed a legend. A romance specialist like him was a rarity in cinema. It is sad that today Raj Kapoor is not alive — and even his R.K. Studio is no longer there in Chembur. All I can do now is sing in his memory, “Jaane Kahan Gaye Woh Din.”
Also Read: Why is Halloween Celebrated? Origins, Traditions and Fun Facts
Subscribe Deshwale on YouTube
