The Age Of The Awaras

His father, Prithviraj, acted in the first full-length Indian talkie, Alam Ara. That was way back in 1931. His great grand-daughter, Kareena, is still going strong. There is no show business clan quite like it in the world. The illustrious Barrymores of America and the Redgraves of Britain don’t even come close.

If you suffer from the impression that our movie stars live charmed, fabulously wealthy lives, Madhu Jain’s biography will quickly cure you of it. After the colossal failure of Mera Naam Joker in 1971, Raj Kapoor had to mortgage his beloved studio. He slept on the floor for two months in Bina Ramani’s tiny flat in New York and took the bus to see his ailing father in hospital. Raj Kapoor drank recklessly, only Black Label, and all his three sons have been devastated by alcohol. Shammi Kapoor describes it as the "family curse". At least one Kapoor used to get physical with his wife while in an alcoholic stupor and the police had to be called. The Kapoor men loved food, women and whisky, not necessarily in that order. All of them turned obese and some diabetic.

The Kapoors like to call themselves Pathans—they are actually of Punjabi stock settled in Peshawar—and brought with them to Bombay the frontier attitude towards women. The boys in the family became actors. The film industry was not meant for the girls. They were confined to early, arranged marriages. Only Karisma and Kareena broke from the mould, thanks to their mother Babita. Randhir runs the studio but his daughters have not been given the opportunity to act under the RK banner. He has been waiting for his nephew, Rishi’s son, to grow up and keep the male acting line going.

Madhu Jain writes with affection but, to her credit, she does not step back from exploring the clan’s darker side. Raj Kapoor had little time for his family. He used to return from his studio around two in the morning. By the time he got up, the children were already in school. Most of his waking hours were spent at the infamous cottage behind the studio in the company of his cronies and his leading lady of that time. Krishna, his long-suffering wife, walked out of the house several times when she got fed up of his affair with Nargis and later with other buxom South Indian women.

That brings us to Nargis. No one in Indian cinema has been more exploited than the most famous of all our heroines. All her RK films focused on the hero, played by Raj Kapoor, and she was cast only as the love interest. In her last film at RK, Jagte Raho, Nargis had just five minutes of screen time. Her best films were made elsewhere, especially opposite Dilip Kumar until a jealous Raj Kapoor put a stop to that pairing. Mehboob wanted her for Aan, India’s first technicolor film, but her lover wouldn’t allow it. The role went to Nadira, a newcomer, who made a mess of it. Nargis will forever be remembered for Mother India. That came her way only after she walked out on Raj Kapoor, leaving a message on his tape recorder.

There was a time when the clan gave us many hours of pleasure. The Kapoors brightened our dull lives with such scintillating fare as Sikandar (Prithviraj as Alexander the Great), Barsaat, Awara, Sangam and Bobby. But behind all that tinsel, they were just as screwed up as the rest of us, if not more so.

Few books on Indian cinema have been written with such wit, clarity and sparkle. But I spotted several errors. Nargis was buried, not cremated. Till the end, she remained true to the faith she was born in. She was blessed with a wonderful husband, Sunil Dutt, and it didn’t make the slightest difference to him. For the record, Nargis, not Vyjanthimala, was cast opposite Dilip Kumar in Mela. The first RK film was Aag, not Barsaat. Lalita Pawar was in Shri 420, not Awara. Bhowani Junction was shot in Pakistan, not Ceylon.