Memories of my two encounters with Rishi Kapoor, one a two-hour-long interview with him at his Pali Hill residence and the other while escorting him to a special show by dear friend, writer and stand-up satirist Shireesh Kanekar, come flooding back to mind this morning.
Rishi Kapoor was the only star among those I have interviewed—and I have not interviewed many—who seemed genuinely interested in his interlocutor. Riding from Bandra to Ravindra Natya Mandir in Prabhadevi in his Standard Herald one evening in the mid 1980s, along with another dear friend of longstanding, fellow journalist and writer Amrita Shah, we chatted for about 35 minutes, of which about 20 were spent on him asking me about gathering news as a hard news journalist, something I have been. Incidentally, Rishi Kapoor was the chief guest at Shireesh’s show and I was his chaperon for the evening.
“I have always been fascinated by journalists, not of the film kind but your kind. Look at the kind of interactions you get to have everyday. Never a dull moment,” he said.
I pointed out that it was very unusual for an actor, that too a top star like him, to be not so self-centered.
That’s when he broke into his first invective of the evening. He had warned me during my earlier encounter with him for an interview along with Shireesh that he tends to cuss a lot, not to cuss but merely as a punctuation mark. “It’s just part of my language. Cussing just happens without my trying,” he said and laughed.
“Arey bencho….kya self-centered?” he said, “We are also human beings like you. At least I am curious about others.”
I am sure people would understand what “bencho…”is and Rishi Kapoor, like a true blue Punjabi that he was, always intoned it without really completing it the whole word. The d at the end just trailed away. At times it was just “ben…” “It is a terrible habit but it is part of my vocal reflexes,” he said. Those were his exact words.
During our interview with him a few months before that car ride, Shireesh and I had planned a bit of tease for him. We had decided that just as we sit down for the interview, we would pretend to be uneasy. Shireesh would look at him uncomfortably and I him, as if we wanted Rishi Kapoor to know something unpleasant but we did not know how to broach.
We did that for a few seconds with Shireesh saying, “Mayank, aap bol do.” I said, “Nahi, Shireesh aap. Main nahi keh paunga.” That back and forth went on for about 15 seconds. By now Rish Kapoor was on the edge of his sofa. I could see his lips silently curling into “bencho…”
That’s when Shireesh and I said in unison, “We don’t know how to tell you this but you are one extraordinary actor….”
And then, first a big sigh of relief on Rishi Kapoor’s face, followed by a guffaw and then, “Arey bencho…I thought you were going to say something very bad. Kya acting ki aap dono ne!”
Of the A-list stars of Hindi cinema of the last 50 years only a couple of more would be as spontaneous as Rishi Kapoor. Apart from him another name that comes to mind is that Govinda. Amitabh Bachchan once told me that, “I had to be on guard with Chintu (Rishi Kapoor) whenever we shot a film together. While I was a highly prepared actor Chintu would just come on the set and produce a perfect take without any apparent effort."
Incidentally, he did not like being called Chintu, a nickname that seemed to stick to him throughout his life. "Yaar, achhchha khasa naam hai mera, Rishi phir yeh kyun?" is what he would say.
Here is to Rishi Kapoor, a bona fide Hindi movie superstar.