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Mera joota hain Japani, Yeh patloon Englistaani, Sar pe lal topi Russi, Phir bhi dil hain Hindustani. The time of kings was over. India was free and the one singing of its exuberant confusion was none other than Prithviraj’s firstborn, Ranbir Raj. Handsome, with melancholy eyes, he expressed the symbolism and aspirations of India, says film-maker Shyam Benegal.

The opposite of the king, Raj Kapoor was the Chaplinesque fool, the man of the streets, helpless, afraid and dreamy. Sociologist Ashis Nandy identified the strong sense of ‘‘moral and aesthetic unease with the city’’ that runs through Raj Kapoor’s early films (Awara, Anari). In Jaagte Raho, for instance, he plays a villager, possibly a refugee from East Bengal, who, in search of water, stumbles into an apartment block and witnesses the hollowness of the urban sophisticated rich. A woman, Nargis in a semi-pastoral setting, finally quenches his thirst. “Home,’’ Nandy observes, ‘‘is natural womanly nurture in a rediscovered village.”

Raj was romantically linked with Nargis. He was a Hindu, she a Muslim. Their circumstances were different and he was married. But Raj was a dreamer noted for his ‘‘trademark dream sequences’’ as Benegal points out. Two decades later, he would make films (Ram Teri Ganga Maili, Satyam Shivam Sundaram) about the purity and beauty of womanhood—treating the subject with what one critic called the ‘‘carnality of a schoolboy’’. If so, it was the reigning Indian fantasy come alive.

Two of Prithviraj’s children died young. As a precaution, it was decided that the next time his wife Rama would undergo a hospital delivery instead of the traditional home birth.

In October 1931, she gave birth to a boy of volcanic energy. ‘‘Shammi Kapoor broke the sound barrier in Hindi films,’’ says film critic Dinesh Raheja. Influenced by the hip-shaking exhibitionism of American rock idol Elvis Presley, Shammi, Raj’s younger brother, danced and yodelled his way with a succession of pretty, shapely heroines including Asha Parekh in Nasir Hussain’s Dil Deke Dekho (1959) and Saira Banu in Subodh Mukherjee’s Junglee (1961).

In Intimate Relations, his book on Indian sexuality, psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar writes: “The Krishna lover has the endearing narcissism of the boy on the eve of the Oedipus stage, when the world is felt to be his ‘oyster’, the fantasy is of the phallus—Shammi Kapoor in his films used his whole body as one.’’ The flamboyant star was to lose his wife, actress Geeta Bali to small pox, a disease the government was to work hard to eradicate from Indian soil. By the Eighties, Shammi would emerge in robes and holy beads, reflecting the times and the growing popularity of Indian godmen such as Rajneesh and Mahesh Yogi. Soon after, with amazing prescience, Shammi would find a new obsession—the Internet.

Equally modern but more laid-back was Shammi’s younger brother, Shashi. Shashi was the charmer, the quintessential nice guy. The ideal husband of Kabhi Kabhi, the good cop of Deewar, the baffled heir in Namak Halal. He was much in demand as an actor and jokingly referred to himself as a “taxi’’. But it was a time of grimy smugglers and the angry young man.

Shashi with his suave sophistication, his British wife and westernised lifestyle seemed a tad removed from the real India. It was a space from which he launched new experiments. Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai was one. He also boosted the emerging parallel cinema movement by producing films such as Junoon and Utsav. And with appearances in Merchant-Ivory films, he was, as Benegal puts it, ‘‘India’s first crossover star.’’

Randhir Kapoor had his father’s sad eyes. Raj Kapoor’s eldest son also played the rustic simpleton in Ponga Pandit and Rampur Ka Lakshman, and the college boy in the 1972 hit, Jawani Diwani. However, it was his younger brother Rishi, pink lipped and rosy cheeked, who swept the nation’s teenage girls off their feet in Bobby. Through the late Seventies, Rishi Kapoor with his trademark bell-bottoms, his shiny guitar and elegant moves represented the disco age in India. It also marked the beginnings of a youth culture in the country.

Both Randhir and Rishi rebelled against the family convention of arranged marriages. They also took on the job of completing their father’s unfinished film, Henna. For a family that had left its home across the border, the love story of an Indian boy and a Pakistani girl was probably a personal reconciliation as well.

It was the last barrier to be breached. A Kapoor girl in films! But Karisma, as film critic and director Khalid Mohammad observes, ‘‘was a natural born actress.’’ There was an old world sensuality and sincerity about Randhir and Babita’s firstborn that allowed her to play varied roles. She was the kitschy pati-worshipping doormat in Biwi No. 1 and the earnest Muslim girl searching for her terrorist brother in Fiza.

By the time her sister came on the scene, Bollywood had moved West and expanded its repertoire at home. Kareena was the snotty Pooh of Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham and the prostitute of Chameli. ‘‘She’s an original,’’ says Mohammad.

The Kapoors are Bollywood’s best known family. Their hot tempers, their gregariousness, their love of rich food and their Holi bash at the RK house in Chembur, Mumbai, have been well documented. As in all families, there have been differences, disappointments, separations, scandals and death. They have survived, they have changed and they have even taken the latest lesson in their stride—which is that, given a chance, the girls will outdo the boys.