Bollywood bids tearful adieu to Shashi Kapoor
MUMBAI: The skies opened up on Tuesday as the legendary Shashi Kapoor, the romantic Hindi screen icon of the 70s and 80s, was cremated with state honours at the Santacruz Hindu crematorium here.
The long-ailing actor passed away on Monday evening at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital here. He was 79.
Shashi Kapoor was given a state funeral, which was held amid massive security around noon in the electric crematorium.
The actor-producer’s body was taken to the crematorium from his Juhu home in an ambulance at 11.45 am.
Hundreds of people bid the actor a tearful adieu in the pelting rain.
His three children — sons Kunal and Karan and daughter Sanjana — were there as were other members of the Kapoor family and scores of film personalities to say their goodbyes to the actor who straddled the worlds of commercial and art house cinema.
About a dozen policemen draped the actor’s body in tricolour, which was later removed for the rituals. There were three rounds of fire to honour the late actor, who had spent more than four decades in Hindi cinema.
This was followed by a minute’s silence.
Hundreds of fans with umbrellas and raincoats gathered at the crematorium, undeterred by the rain and warnings of a cyclone.
Celebrities such as Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan, Shyam Benegal, Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Ayan Mukherji, Hansal Mehta, Nandita Das, Lara Dutta with husband Mahesh Bhupathi, and Maharashtra politician Ramdas Athawale were amongst those who paid their respects to the actor.
Writer Salim Khan, who gave Shashi Kapoor the iconic oneline “Mere paas ma hai” in Deewar along with Javed Akhtar, was there as well.
An emotional Bachchan, who paired with Shashi Kapoor to give hits such as “Deewaar”, “Silsila” and “Kabhi Kabhie”, was seen hugging the actor’s family members.
Bachchan also visited the veteran actor’s residence.
Saif, who is married to Shashi Kapoor’s grand-niece Kareena Kapoor Khan, arrived early with Ranbir Kapoor.
“I used to call him uncle. I was very close to him. It’s not only a loss for our family but Bollywood,” said the “Chef ” actor.
Sanjay Dutt, Naseeruddin Shah, Anil Kapoor and Aamir Khan were amongst those present at the residence for a prayer meeting earlier in the day.
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Poonam Dhillon, Shakti Kapoor, Dev Mukherjee, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Seema Pahwa, Supriya Pathak, Suresh Oberoi and Saroj Khan were also present at the cremation.
NEW DELHI: Do you know how Shashi Kapoor got his name? Kapoor was born as Balbir Raj but his mother did not like the name and began calling him Shashi – or moonbeam – since he was obsessed with the moon and spent long hours watching it.
Shashi Kapoor was born to Prithviraj Kapoor and Ramsarni Kapoor on March 18, 1938 in then Calcutta.
He was given the name Balbir Raj – in keeping with the Kapoor family tradition of adopting the word ‘Raj’ (or ‘king’) in its many variations.
But Ramsarni was less than happy with the name Balbir and thus changed it to Shashi.this nugget of information extracted from the book “Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, The Star”, written by Aseem Chhabra and published by Rupa Publications last year.
Shashi Kapoor died on December 4, 2017 in Mumbai at the age of 79 due to a kidney problem.
The book also says how Raj Kapoor used to call his brother ‘taxi’. Raj Kapoor used the word ‘taxi’ to describe his brother when he was desperately trying to get dates from Shashi for Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
While actors were queueing up to play the lead role in the film, Raj strongly felt that only Shashi could play his younger self in this somewhat autobiographical tale. So he looked at his brother’s schedule and coolly appropriated all the dates he had given other filmmakers.
His frenetic lifestyle, which made a car his semi-permanent address, led to the nickname, “taxi’, the book says.
According to Chhabra, Jennifer Kendal Kapoor maintained a strict watch over her husband’s diet when she was alive.
“This is the reason why, unlike the other Kapoor men, Shashi Kapoor stayed slim for the longest time. It was also why a lot of those around Shashi would feel sorry for him,” he writes.
“I remember, when I worked with him, I would look at his food and say, ‘What’s wrong with you, Shashi Uncle?’” he quotes Neetu Singh Kapoor as telling him.
“One orange he would have and thoda sa dahi (a little bit of yogurt). That was his lunch. And he would say, ‘My wife will kill me if I eat anything more!’”
Chhabra says the early works of the 1960s and 1970s established Shashi Kapoor as a star of Hindi cinema, and then, several key films formed a part of his legacy.
“There is no actual count of how many movies he acted in.”
Many – such as Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, Jinnah and Side Streets – never got theatre releases in India, and a few have been forgotten today.