The immortal Joker ditty “jeena yahan, marna yahan, iske siva jana kahaan” is as true for the movies, as it is for life. I won’t be surprised if it is sung 100 years from now. (Wikimedia Commons)
New DelhiDec 14, 2024 16:09 IST First published on: Dec 14, 2024 at 12:22 IST
The scruffy protagonist of a Telugu blockbuster, currently busy breaking office records, speaks in tongues while hanging upside down in a Japanese dock, before switching to a song every Indian has in their DNA: “Mera joota hai Japani,”warbles Pushpa, “doosri line mujhe nahin aani” (I don’t know the second line), and then finishes it, like we have done all these years since Raj sang it in Shree 420 (1955), with “phir bhi dil hai Hindustani”.
That one line is all it takes for an Indian hero, coasting on desi chutzpah, to conquer foreign aliens, in 2024. Perfect timing, as we celebrate 100 years of Raj Kapoor, who formed the trio of heroes, along with Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand, that a newly-independent nation fell in love with. Like his two equally famous contemporaries, Kapoor was a true modernist who understood the importance of staying grounded while appealing to the world, and that’s the reason why his films found a loyal audience in so many countries.
A century on, Kapoor’s films still speak to us, in the way they mirrored bewildering societal changes challenging class-and-caste barriers, creating the kind of overarching drama and characters that were very much of their time, but were also, astonishingly, future forward.
Take Raj of Shree 420, which Khwaja Ahmad Abbas wrote and Kapoor directed. Raj is Kapoor’s version of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp (which he popularised in the 1951 hit Awaara) in which his mannered screen persona fit right in; he’s a small-town boy walking, walking, walking to the big city to make a life; he’s the scamp, but even as he revels in his chaar-sau-beesi ways, we know that underneath it all, he’s essentially a good man.
Take the Raj of Awaara (also an Abbas-Kapoor collaboration), whose “awaara hoon” was a clarion call for a carefree fellow who wore the bottoms of his trousers rolled, loafed, picked pockets, basically did everything that nice young men didn’t, without deserting his innate niceness. After the film, the term awaara lost its sting, becoming an almost-affectionate epithet for a young man who would sow his oats, and return to his one-and-only true love.
Take Hiraman of the 1966 Teesri Kasam, directed by Basu Bhattacharya, in which Kapoor was cast as a rural simpleton whose romance with Hirabai (an incandescent Waheeda Rehman) made the humble paan a rage years before Amitabh Bachchan’s small-town sharpie in Don (1978) did.
And also take Raj Ranbir aka Raju of Mera Naam Joker (1970) who poured his heart and soul into the melancholic circus performer who is shaped by his relationship with three women he encounters at different stages of his life. It was one of the lengthiest films made at the time, which left viewers cold. It was a failure that deeply impacted Kapoor, who then switched his gaze determinedly towards youthful stories. His 1973 Bobby, starring two winsome teenagers, his son Rishi (who had a bit part in Mera Naam Joker) and the then unknown Dimple Kapadia, became a huge hit, turning both the young leads into overnight sensations.
More than his actorly pursuits, though, Kapoor’s legendary production slate became a cornerstone for the nascent film industry which flourished and grew in Bombay, under his banner R K Films. He established it all the way back in 1948, with Aag, in which he starred with Nargis, Premnath and Kamini Kaushal. Anyone who sees that iconic image of Raj-and-Nargis, lost in each other’s eyes — part of the film poster — would know that those two would light up whenever they got together.
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Kapoor, who was rightly dubbed The Greatest Showman of Hindi movies, knew the power of the moving image, and he bowed to no one when it came to training a gaze on the female body, which he termed worshipful. Prurience, pshaw, and so what if his leading lady Zeenat Aman, revelling in her new-found fame as the queen of Instagram, could be beheld in all her gorgeousness in the 1978 Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
He was also one of the first Indian filmmakers who understood all aspects of filmmaking in their entirety. And his legacy, which he carried forward from his illustrious father Prithviraj, spreading it with brothers Shashi-Shammi, and sons Randhir-Rishi-Rajiv, is safe with grandkids Karisma-Kareena-Ranbir, and seems to have found fresh blood in great-grandson Agastya Nanda.
The immortal Joker ditty “jeena yahan, marna yahan, iske siva jana kahaan” is as true for the movies, as it is for life. I won’t be surprised if it is sung 100 years from now.
shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com
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