Film fans are also interested in the lives of their favourite film stars, and India is no different. Since the 1930s, film publications – magazines and books – in India have fed their readers stories about stars, often with salacious details of their personal life. Most of such magazines enjoyed widespread circulation.
Cover page of Shama magazine.
Beyond the well-known English and Hindi publications, there was also a big readership of magazines in Urdu. Many such magazines, such as Shama, were household names not just among casual readers, but those from the film industry also took them seriously since they reached a very important target audience.
These magazines have since faded away, or even vanished, and their archives are difficult to access. Yasir Abbasi, a cinematographer and film-buff, has unearthed a few of them and compiled as well as translated a selection of articles for a new book – Yeh Un Dinoñ Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends.
The book is divided into two sections – articles about film personalities written by their peers, and personal pieces by stars and others about their own lives. The pieces provide not just fascinating glimpses into the lives of the subjects, but also paint vignettes of an earlier time in the industry – mainly the 1950s and 1960s.
What stands out is the candour of the pieces – stars freely talk about their exploitative families, their difficult experiences with producers, broken marriages and of betrayals by close friends. This level of frankness is difficult to find now, since the lives and public personas of stars are so carefully curated by their handlers and PR people.
In this excerpt, K.A. Abbas talks about film maker-actor Raj Kapoor and analyses his obsession with cinema and with himself.
§
Raj Kapoor by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (edited excerpts)
I had watched Mehboob Khan’s Andaz, and when I wrote the story of Awara some time later, I suggested to him that Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor should be cast in the film.
Mehboob Khan approved of Prithviraj Kapoor, but for the role of the hero, he preferred Dilip Kumar to Raj Kapoor. I did not agree with his choice.
Around the same time, Raj Kapoor was on the lookout for a script. By then he had made just one film – Aag. When he came to know that I had written a story and had recommended his name to Mehboob Khan for the role of the central character, he approached me.
In those days, Raj Kapoor was a man full of humility, with no trace of any pride whatsoever. I gave the story of Awara to him as I was convinced after watching Andaz that he was best suited for the title role of the story.
Also read: India Needs the Magic of Raj Kapoor Like Never Before
According to my point of view, he is like an engine. At that time I believed that if the engine could be connected to an appropriate train, my thoughts could be spread far and wide. This is the reason why I write for him in spite of knowing that he will end up making compromises and I’ll have to accept them. I feel that whatever he may do, my ideas and beliefs would still travel a fair distance.
The concessions that he made during Awara were minimum; he compromised a bit more in Shree 420; by the time Bobby came out, I had to say that it was Raj Kapoor’s film, not mine. My story was about a rich boy falling in love with a poor girl. It had an ayah and Raj Kapoor transformed her into a governess; he put a refrigerator stacked with liquour in her house. Similarly, the father of the girl – who was a poor man in my story – was now a well-to-do fisherman with cash in his cupboard.
Yeh Un Dinoñ Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends, by Yasir Abbasi. Credit: Bloomsbury
Yet, I still believe that Raj Kapoor is a powerful engine – one that can carry my thoughts a long way. So, I continue to let him fill the fisherman’s cupboard with money.
I’ve seen him at the time when he was making his first film Aag – when he had to run from one end of the city to the other just for the sake of a thousand rupees or a can of film. In the course of making his second film Barsaat, there were times when, after finishing the shooting, he would go to sleep in the small second-hand car that he owned in those days. When it was time to eat, he would sit cross-legged on the studio floor along with his crew and have the food that was brought in from a restaurant at Grant Road…
I’ve seen him in myriad moods – laughing and making others laugh, singing, crying, getting drunk, playing the dhol and dancing with glee. There are opinions galore about him. While some say that he is the finest actor in India, there are some who feel he is merely a jester and a clown.
Some vouch for his large-heartedness, while others doubt if he has a heart at all. A few also feel that he is an actor who has a propensity for acting in real life as well. Then there are those who think that he is a big flirt and a dil phenk [philanderer] who gets ‘attached’ to all his heroines. There are frequent rumours about his love life. I know it for a fact (and so do those who are close to him) that there is just one true, firm and resolute love in his life – himself.
He believes in all manifestations of God… Yet, more than any mahaatma, he believes in his own self – his own aatma.
The only thing in the world that Raj Kapoor is interested in is Raj Kapoor. His interest in other things is also due to the virtue of their association with Raj Kapoor. For instance, the Soviet Union holds his attention because the films of Raj Kapoor are very popular there; he is concerned about the art of cinema because Raj Kapoor is a filmmaker. If he had his way, he would never watch a film that was not made by Raj Kapoor and not let anyone else watch it either.
The most important word in his dictionary is ‘I’…
So, why do his friends and colleagues endure his self-love? If he loves just himself then why do all of us still love him? Well, that’s because there’s something else that he places even before himself – his work, his art.
He can sacrifice just about anything in his quest to make a good film. Money, time, comfort, pleasure – he doesn’t care if he has to relinquish any of these, irrespective of whether it belongs to himself or someone else. When he is working, he is totally detached from everything else, and that includes his wife, his children, his friends and his relatives.
Nargis and Raj Kapoor in ‘Chori Chori’ (1956).
He works like a lunatic – not the kind that can be found in an asylum but like Majnu, who was love-crazed. He is the Farhad who wants to use the chisel of his art to cut through mountains of gold to bring out streams of milk (with a precondition that there would be a signboard next to the brook that would proclaim – ‘This stream was made by Raj Kapoor’).
Still, this self-love and self-confidence cannot be equated with petty selfishness. It is more like the vanity of Narcissus, who fell in love with himself after catching a glimpse of his own reflection in the water. This is not selfishness, it is egoism – a scenario where human frailty leaps forward (or rises) to end up becoming the defining philosophy of one’s life…
Self-belief or dignity is like a forceful engine that can propel an artiste ahead in life. But unless it is fuelled by ideals and linked to the train of humanity, there lies a risk that the engine might keep wandering like a vagabond – an awara– on the tracks of conceit. The day the ‘I’ of Raj Kapoor merges with the ‘Us’ of humanity, his work, his art, and his karmayog will reach the zenith of success.
Excerpted with permission from Yeh Un Dinoñ Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends, by Yasir Abbasi (Bloomsbury, December 2018).
Portraits by Geetika Narang Abbasi