A star for & of all seasons

Nonika Singh

• As long as his wife Jennifer Kapoor lived, she kept a hawk’s eye on his diet and Shashi Kapoor’s lunch invariably would be as frugal as a small bowl of dahi and an orange.
• He made Simi Garewal comfortable in her much-hyped nude scenes in the film Siddhartha. 
• He taught Shabana Azmi who was once his fan a thing or two about technical aspects of facing the camera.
• His elder bother Raj Kapoor, who otherwise treated him like a  son, was so peeved with his frantic shooting schedules that he called him a taxi which could be rent out to different people for different hours.

Brimming with anecdotes, this and much more unveils in Aseem Chhabra’s extensively well-researched book Shashi Kapoor: The Householder and The Star. Pray, of all the actors why Shashi? Especially if one considers that the actor was never really a superstar and is today remembered for movies like Deewar in which others like Big B walked away with accolades.

However, Aseem (in Chandigarh to release his book at the invitation of Adab Foundation) reminds that the most iconic dialogue in Deewar, “Mere pass maa hai” actually came from Shashi. He further qualifies, “He may not have been a superstar but he always complemented them.” 

Of course, Aseem’s reasons for writing a book on him go way beyond his Bollywood innings. Today we might be going ga ga over Priyanka Chopra’s foreign exploits, but Shashi was the first crossover actor who acted in as many as six Merchant Ivory productions including Heat and Dust. And it’s almost with a hint of pride, if not exactly a boast, that Aseem shares how the film written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala competed in the Cannes Film Festival way back in 1983. 

No doubt, Aseem has approached his subject, who by the way he never met for an interview, with a fair degree of fondness. Yet, the journalist in him ensured an objective, impartial if not a dispassionate perspective. 

Indeed, had he been able to interview Shashi first person and first hand, the book would have been stronger but also perhaps he admits “I would have gushed more.” By the time Aseem began writing the biography Shashi was (is) in no condition to interact. Thus the New York-based writer had little choice but to rely on secondary sources. On hindsight, he agrees it has been a blessing for it allowed him the requisite distance to assess the man and the actor. He simply interviewed as many people associated with the Dadasaheb Phalke recipient as he could. Sifting truth from exaggeration wasn’t difficult. Initially the daunting task was—how to overcome the journalistic trait of confining oneself to word limit of no more than a 1000 words. But 39,000 words just flowed like a torrent at one go. The other challenge of sourcing photographs was more onerous. While some like Shyam Benegal who directed Shashi in the actor’s home productions such as Junoon and Kalyug were more than generous, other makers claimed to have lost them all. Aseem laments the bad habit of not archiving and also forgetting far too easily. For those suffering from memory lapses, this biography is a ready reckoner on how Shashi contributed immensely to theatre and  cinema. As for those who can only connect him through Ranbir Kapoor, this is Aseem’s way of telling them here is a star that may not have moved heaven and earth but certainly moved back and forth between different streams of cinema with felicity and often with aplomb.         

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No skeletons

Aseem was not tempted to sensationalise the book with saucy details. For one he is not that kind of a journalist who thrives on gossip. More importantly he says, “Shashi is 78. I am not here to malign him only to celebrate his stellar innings.” 

The brighter side

In case all you can remember Shashi Kapoor is in eminently forgettable films like Chor Machaye Shor, the critic Aseem harks back to Junoon and Kalyug and gives him full marks in both.