Deepti Naval recalls meeting ‘man of music’ Raj Kapoor, being devastated when he died: ‘I was the only woman at his last rites’

By the time Raj Kapoor came to New York, Deepti had done three-four interviews and was more self-assured. She was a huge fan of the showman whose films, like Jagte Raho, Shree 420 and Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, while being commercial entertainers, propagated the right Indian values. She was just a child when she saw Jagte Raho, a film about middle-class greed and corruption, seen through the eyes of a parched villager looking for water. This Raj Kapoor production, written by KA Abbas and directed by Sombhu Mitra and Amit Maitra, has some beautiful songs composed by Salil Chowdhury, from Mukesh’s philosophical “Zindagi khwab hai”, picturized on a drunken Motilal—it became a Manna Dey rendition, “Ei duniyay bhai sobi hoi”, in the film’s Bengali version, Ek Din Raatre, filmed on Chhabi Biswas—and Mohd. Rafi and S Balbir’s catchy “Main koi jhoot boleya” to the Lata Mangeshkar bhajan, “Jaago Mohan pyaare”. The film won the Crystal Globe Grand Prix at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia in 1957.

Deepti was also deeply inspired by Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, inspired by social activist Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s call to hardened dacoits to surrender voluntarily to police without shedding blood. Among the evergreen Shankar-Jaikishan compositions in this cult classics are Mukesh’s “Aa ab laut chalen” and the soul-stirring title track, “Hoton pe sachai rehti hai, jahaan dil mein safai rehti hai, hum us desh ke wasi hain, jis desh mein Ganga behti hai” to another Lata Mangeshkar gem, “O basanti pawan pagal”.

The actress remembers Raj Kapoor as a “man of music” and their one-hour radio interaction was peppered with many of his songs. “Two of my favourites are “O basanti pawan pagal” and “O mere sanam, o mere sanam, do jism magar ek jaan hain hum” from Sangam. I suddenly felt very grown-up after watching the film… The silence of Rajendra Kumar’s love for Vyjayathimala, their sacrifice, her persona as the woman in white, all of it left a lasting impression on me. I’ve grown to love white too, and black, which is the colour everyone wears in New York,” she shares.

Deepti was equally enraptured by Mera Naam Joker, which in her memoir, A Country Called Childhood, he describes as “a landmark film of my youth”. She points out that the three-part film offered a unique take on relationships, different from the one-dimensional, black-and-white, achcha-burra, equations one saw in the Hindi films of the time. “In different phases of his life, the joker falls in love with different women, who have since moved on, but they come back with their partners, for his final performance,” she murmurs, moved by the sequence where Raj Kapoor’s Raju, holding the now-iconic joker puppet and camouflaging his pain, sings, “Jeena yahan marna yahan”. “The message I came back with, ‘the show must go on’, is a lesson in living,” she asserts.

Understandably, Deepti was super excited when she managed to reach the actor-filmmaker in New York and Raj Kapoor agreed to meet her. Accompanied by a few college friends and armed with a bulky tape recorder, she arrived for the interview. “He was so endearing, so easy to chat with, so open to talking about his life and work, what had inspired him and what mattered to him,” she marvels, wishing she had copies of those interviews today. “But there’s nothing of ‘Rang Mahal’ left today,” she sighs, then adds with a smile, “My first meeting with Rajjji will always remain a delightful event in my life.”

In Mumbai she got to meet Raj Kapoor again. This time, she was accompanied by actor Anil Kapoor. By then Deepti herself was doing films and she was moved when Raj Kapoor’s youngest son, Rajeev, told her that his dad had seen Ek Baar Phir, Chashme Buddoor and Saath Saath and appreciated her work.

“I never got to work with him, but I value the few times I met Rajji. He was always very affectionate towards me and he was the chief guest at my birthday celebrations once. I’m very proud and touched that he came to my apartment, which I had newly bought and not even done up until then, to wish me. My father was also there on the occasion,” she remembers.

Their last meeting was at his cremation. When Deepti learnt that Raj Kapoor was no more, she just ran from where she was then. “Jahan cab mila, I took a cab, jahan auto mila, I took an auto, and just barged in. His last rites were being performed and the pyre was already burning. I stood there, silent and devastated, remembering the man I had first met as a young girl. Suddenly, it struck me that I was the only woman present there and realised that women were not allowed by the family at the funeral beyond a point. But unknowingly, I had breached even this divide to bid Rajji a final goodbye,” she signs off.