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No-show at funerals, but fashion parade at prayer meets
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor (above) is angry, yet again. In a series of tweets, he has lashed out at the “so-called stars of this generation” for not turning up at Vinod Khanna’s funeral on Thursday. Khanna died at the age of 70 in Mumbai, after succumbing to bladder cancer.
“I was angered, not disheartened,” Kapoor tells us, referring to the near-total absence of young actors at the funeral, except Abhishek Bachchan and Randeep Hooda. “What does an actor work for? It’s his last journey and you can’t come to pay [your] respects to a man who has worked in over 150 films and been there for over four decades, and has even worked with you? Sad that a respected senior actor was sent away by not having a lot of people with him wishing him adieu.”
On whether he expects more people to turn up for Khanna’s prayer meet, Rishi retorts, “Yeah, because that’s more of a fashion parade and you want to be in the comforts of air-conditioned premises. Why were you not there for this [funeral] event?”
Khanna earned immense adulation from his co-stars. Kapoor says that despite this, “it’s heartbreaking that none of his leading ladies were there. Even many actors from my generation weren’t there.”
Saying more about the sparse attendance at Vinod Khanna’s funeral, Rishi Kapoor (right) points out that it wasn’t as if Khanna didn’t have any connections with the industry for a long time. Khanna’s last films are Dilwale (2015) and Ek Thi Rani Aishi Bhi (2017). “There’s some human element that you want to share someone’s grief,” says Kapoor.
On Thursday night, he had tweeted: “Shameful. Not ONE actor of this generation attended Vinod Khanna’s funeral. And that too he has worked with them. Must learn to respect. When I die, I must be prepared. None will shoulder me. Very very angry with today’s so called stars.”
The 64-year-old shares that even though he “was never overtly friendly with Vinod Khanna”, he had no reason to skip Khanna’s funeral. “My career has been sprinkled with films with him. I can’t say that I shared a great vibe with him, a great chemistry or anything of that sort. It was pure respect.”
Among those who’ve shared screen space with Khanna in recent times are actors such as Shah Rukh Khan, Varun Dhawan, Salman Khan and Sonu Sood, none of them was there at the funeral. Did Kapoor have any particular names in mind while writing those tweets? He says, “I’m just saying that this generation — actors, filmmakers, producers — none of them came. I’ve seen this happen at Feroz Khan and Rajesh Khanna’s funeral also. It seems these actors have troubled this generation [so] that they don’t care.”