Shammi Kapoor - Blithe Spirit

A few months ago, we sent him an email, and got a prompt and courteous reply, sending us his cellphone number, asking us to call him. When we spoke, he warned us that his health meant that there were days when he was just too tired to talk, so we’d have to take a chance that he might not be available when we were.

The day the stars align, Madhu and I knock at the door of the flat at Malabar Hill where Shammi Kapoor has been living for 51 years.

We are greeted by his charming wife, Neila, asked to make ourselves comfortable, offered coffee. A short while later, he glides in on an electric wheelchair (he tells us later, when we are talking about his passion for vehicles, that he had found and bought it online himself).

He will be 80 in October and he was very ill earlier in the year and spent some time in hospital. His large frame seems somehow shrunken, what’s left of his hair is wispy and white, fine wrinkles cover his hands, and instead of the hearty voice I expected, he sounds soft, airy, tired.

The conversation starts unpromisingly. He asks if I’d seen his Web site. Of course, I said, I had pored through junglee.org.in. “No,” he says, “I made that 20 years ago and I haven’t updated it for years. My grandchildren were that much…” he indicates a height about knee-level “…they’re all now 27, 26. No, I do a video blog, Shammi Kapoor Unplugged (youtube.com/show/shammikapoorunplugged). I speak for two, three, sometimes four minutes, going down memory lane. I’ve done about 45 incidents on it. The Films Division people are bringing out a DVD on my life.” He chuckles. “I thought it was more like an obituary. But I…” chuckle “…failed to die. You don’t need to talk to me. I’ve said it all there, whatever you want to know.” My heart sinks. “Everything, about me, the Internet…” I quickly interject: When did he get into computers, get online?

“When Rajji died, my niece [Raj Kapoor’s daughter] had come from Delhi. She had brought a small Apple Mac SE, and she was typing, some estate stuff. I had never seen a computer before. I asked her what this was. She said ‘Sit down. Type something.’ And that was that!

“A little later, I was going to Russia for my brother Shashi’s movie, Ajooba, via London. I found an Apple shop opposite Harrods at Knightsbridge; my wife went to Harrods and I went to the Apple store and she spent the whole day there and I spent the whole day at Apple.” That soft chuckle again.

His current set-up includes a G5 Mac Pro, two monitors, a Laptop Mac Pro, and an iPad. The iPad, he says, is “Beautiful. Especially in my condition. I go for dialysis thrice a week, and you lie down for four, five hours with one of your hands strapped to the needle. So I open the iPad and go to YouTube and I have thousands of my songs and pictures there.”

What was it about the Internet that hooked him? “Communication! Being able to share information! You’re on a global platform, reaching out to people all over the world.”

Was chatting online an interest? “I never indulged too much. I may seem like a yahooish type of a guy, but I’m very much a conservative. On chat you find a lot of young people who talk about…really…”

“I made my Web page myself. There was a young friend of mine who helped me — he’s no more — there was a very simple way. You go to other peoples page’s and pick up the source code, and you copy, and between you put what you want and delete theirs.” I tell him that’s exactly how I learned to make Web pages, and I get my first small smile of approval.

“The computer has been a fantastic companion. It’s a hobby and it’s kept me company. The computer has been a great, great, great pal of mine. I’d spend 10 hours, 11, 12 hours on the computer. I’d learn, I tried everything: Illustrator and Photoshop and you name it, I’ve done it all. And now I’ve forgotten it. It is very important to forget.” Why? “So that you can get something new! You’ve got to throw out some things to make space. Also, I’ve aged. I’ve been an ailing man for the past eight years — renal failure, dialysis — but I’m doing quite well for myself.”

Madhu, who has been quietly circling us, shooting, interjects: “You look like a shiny human being. I’ve never seen that in the photographs...” For the first time, the big man skips a beat. “Shiny. Human Being.” He softly tastes the words, chortles, “Thank you.” One more time: “Shiny human being.” And again that soft chuckle.

I explain that Madhu is a bit of a mystic, and we frequently have to ask him to explain things to us from his planet. “You know what’s most important?” Shammiji asks. “I learnt, a little early, about the tragedies of life. Wonderful things have happened to me but tragedies. I lost my wife…”

“But you learn to live within yourself also. You learn to not wait for something to come up. You learn to let it happen within you. I was very lucky. And as I went nearer to him,” He gestures towards one of the many large photographs of Haidakhanwale Baba, his guru, “I grew, he embraced me. I spent the most wonderful years of my life with him, at his lotus feet. It was 10 years — 74–84 and then he went away — but it was like another lifetime. I was lucky my family was there, especially my wife, who supported me… She got me to him, actually. Wonderful, wonderful moments. You have to be ready for it. You have to open up, let go.”

But he had met the Baba in 1974, after he had already gone through a fair number of ups and downs. “Yes, I had gone through life. I had grown as an actor to a certain extent. For five years, I struggled very hard till I got anywhere. Then I got somewhere and I reached those heights. Then I went.” He points skywards. “And from there again I came down.”

How did he face up to the sudden loss of his first wife, Geeta Bali? “I didn’t. At that time, I was on top of the world. I had Teesri Manzil on the floor, great wonderful success behind me, good pictures on hand. And then this happened. It was like a mooring cut off from me. I went haywire. Those four years were very bad years for me, despite the fact that I had success. I went… berserk is the right word.

“Very fortunately for me, I got to marry Neila. And I closed again. Like you close a bar. I lost a lot of friends. But I gained family. We’ve been together for 42 years. She’s the one who looks after me even now, in this state. But yes, those four years of my life were very bad.” Long pause. “Hota hai.”

He also made a successful transition from leading man to character actor. “I started life anew. Got married again. I lost my parents. I started acting again. For two years nearly, I didn’t act. I closed shop.

“Had I continued as a hero, trying to still do it — which I couldn’t, I started putting on weight and I had broken my knees many times. Whenever I had a knee job to be done, we didn’t have surgery in those days, but you had these Indian plaster lagaanewaley; roj plaster lagata tha, I would lie in bed and drink beer in the afternoon, get up in the evening, have a drink. There was no other choice, I couldn’t walk. My transformation happened from there, because I started putting on weight. I couldn’t do what I was popular for doing and what I enjoyed doing. I never had any pretensions of being a very good actor. But I am a very good performer with my music. Basically I’m an expressionist of what the music contained. I never had a choreographer or dance master going one-two-three-four. Even I didn’t know what I was going to do. I gave it a lot of thought, then I worked on it.”

(Later, he invites us into his computer room, to see his impressive multiple hard-disk twin-monitor set-up. He boots up and from one screen, flips a video over to the other. The ‘Chaand Sa Roshan Chehra’ song from Kashmir Ki Kali pours out over the speakers. “See?” he says, “I’m not dancing. But I’m expressing every beat of the song. Most of my songs were like that.” And, indeed, he is very literally rocking the boat, in time to the beat! He bolsters the point with the ‘Aasman Se Aaye Farishta’ from Evening in Paris, where, as Sharmila Tagore ‘water-skis’, he spends most of his screen time either dangling from a helicopter or on the prow of a speedboat, moving all the time.)

“So when I stopped enjoying that, I said there’s no sense. I’ll end up uselessly doing side roles and be very unhappy. So I closed shop and said, ‘Finished, I will not act any more.’

It gave me a chance to be near my parents. My father and mother both had cancer. And my brothers were both very busy. Rajji was busy after Mera Naam Joker; he was making Bobby. Shashi had just got stardom: he was like a taxi, he had signed so many movies, two, three shifts a day.

I had time, and I spent it with my parents. I travelled to Juhu practically every evening to listen to the BBC news at eight with my father. I would have a drink with him, keep him company, and that’s how I served him, it gave me a chance to be near to them.”

“After they died, I started a new chapter in my life. I started directing. Irma La Douce, I made that as Manoranjan. And I started my career again as a character actor. I enjoyed doing it. I got a very good chance of working with some very wonderful people. With Dilip Kumar. With Raj Kapoor, my brother, I had never had a chance working with him until I became a character actor.

“So it was a different colour all together. A good colour that happened in my life, a good chapter. Till this happened. 2003. Both my kidneys.

“My passion for cars is fantastic. I haven’t driven a car in the past four months because I lost a lot of toes on my feet. But I’ve been driving otherwise. I gave myself the best car possible. I used to take my grandchildren for a movie, drive down to Lonavala, my wife would call, asking ‘where are you by the way?’ I would say, ‘At Lonavala, having a cup of coffee at Fariyas!’ I’ve been doing that and I love to do that and I’ll continue to do that if I can. That’s the short story of my life.”

On his sunny outlook: “It makes it possible for me to be able to sustain myself even in these circumstances. That’s how it should be. The doctors refer to me: ‘Look at Shammi Kapoor. He’s singing away to glory. He’s been here for the last eight years. You’ve been here only today and you’re crying!’ I go there. I smile, wish people: [Singing] ‘Good morning, good morning, good morning to you! Dong! Dong!’ I’m going to be 80 in October and I still flirt with the nurses because that is how you… you make them happy, they make you happy, they look after you.

“And that’s how life should be despite your failings or whatever. You’ve got to go ahead. You’re not going to kick the bucket just like that. When it happens it will happen. Till then you might as well enjoy it. It’s a beautiful world out there.

“I have some impairment: Can’t walk, not very mobile… no reason for me to shed crocodile tears. I may not be having kidneys any more. But I have eyes, I have ears. I can listen to music. I can communicate. The journey is still on.”