He came into cinema with the roar of Raj Kapoor’s scion and vanished soon after, the glory all gone. But Rajiv Kapoor had his innings, and he need not be remembered by only Ram Teri Ganga Maili. In 1983 Rajiv was introduced in Ek Jaan Hain Hum, a well-made love saga that paired the youngest son of Raj Kapoor with a newcomer Divya Rana. Soon as it is wont among debutants, Rajiv and Divya were more involved off screen than on. Nonetheless this film directed by Rajiv Mehra, son of the illustrious producer F C Mehra holds together well as a twisted Romeo and Juliet with Rajiv ending up in the mental asylum .Anu Malik’s music was a big plus. Yaad teri aayegi mujhko bada satayegi remains popular to this day.
Divya and Rajiv were paired again in Aasman (and again in Raj Kapoor’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili where she played the Other Woman). In Aasman directed by Tony Juneja(of Tito-Tony fame) Rajiv was cast in a double role, one noble and rich the other evil and poor(normally it’s the other way around). Rajiv romanced Ms Rana and Ms Tina Munim. The film bombed despite being quite racy and pickled.
Incredibly , Rajiv was cast again in a double role in Lover Boy in 1985 . This is a madcap film directed by Kajol’s father Shomu Mukherjee where Rajiv played Kishen and Kanhaiya and romanced Meenakshi Sheshadri and Anita Raj. But what really makes Lover Boy an oddball worth checking out is Bappi Lahiri’s music score. In the soundtrack Bappi got Kishore Kumar and his wife Leena Chandavarkar to sing a zany track called Kiss me where I am told Kishoreda was actually puckering up with his wife during recording and she didn’t mind.But the real piece de resistance was Asha Bhosle belting out a homage to Mrs Indira Gandhi after her assassination. “Ma Indira luta dee tuney desh ki khatir jaan/ Kho ke tujhe anaath ho gaya saara Hindustan.” Okay then.The song didn’t fit anywhere into the plot. But who cared?
In Lava(1985) director Ravindra Peepat(who really believed in Rajiv and worked in him in another film Hum To Chale Pardes) Rajiv returns from the dead to see his beloved(Dimple Kapadia) married to Raj Babbar. The love triangle holds up well specially because of R D Burman’s music. Jeene de yeh duniya chahe maar daley being a stand-out track.Rajiv stood his ground with his two experienced co-stars.
Finally Rajiv Kapoor’s only blockbuster Ram Teri Ganga Maili which also happens to be his father Raj Kapoor’s farewell film , this one saw the master storyteller at his best. Though many sniggerers said it worked because of Mandakini’s assets, the fact is , this is a very powerful film, a metaphor on love where the purity of the Ganga river is lost as it moves away from its source. Likewise Mandakini’s character Ganga goes from her state of innocence to seduction and pregnancy. A classic with Lata Mangeshkar’s voice anchoring the narrative. Rajiv’s Naren was every bit as convincing and endearing as Mandakini’s Ganga. But then he didn’t have what she did.The audience just didn’t have eyes for Rajiv. They never did.
Prem Granth(1996), the only film that Rajiv Kapoor directed, was no ordinary experience. It was one of the most ambitious films of the 1990s, and it qualifies easily as an honourable failure. Everything about the film, every frame, screams ‘epic’. And though it is a laudable attempt to delineate a woman’s journey from from carefree girlhood to wretchedly dark womanhood, Prem Granth ended up pleasing neither the critics nor the audience.
Here’s why: the film is too much in awe of Raj Kapoor’s cinema. More than Raj Saab’s other two sons Randhir and Rishi, it was Rajiv who inherited his great father’s mantle of showmanship. Or at least that’s what Rajiv set out to achieve when he started making Prem Granth. He chose to do a screen adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s highly complex novel Tess Of The D’Urbervilles which had already been made into a fine film by Roman Polanski in 1979.
Rajiv got his father’s favourite screenwriter Jainendra Jain to adapt Tess into an Indian caste –conflicted drama with the desi Tess, played effectively by Madhuri Dixit being of a “lower” caste and therefore untouchable. However when it came to raping her, a high-caste monster(Govind Namdeo) forgets his caste consciousness.
Lust, unlike love, has no barriers. I think Prem Granth evinced the inherent hypocrisy of physically violating the “untouchables” . Where it failed was in preserving a core of blithe-spiritedness in the proceedings. Prem Granth is a 3-hour granth (scripture) of grief trauma and tragedy. While the original novel and Polanski’s screen adaptation yoked the heroine’s destiny to some amount of optimism, Madhuri Dixit’s Kajri exuded an aura of doom all through, as though to prove Thomas Hardy wrong. The author believed there can be a redemptive course to social oppression. Rajiv Kapoor and his writer Jainendra Jain didn’t believe there was any easy way out of societal discrimination. The fact that Anubhav Sinha made Article 15 on the scourge of casteism 23 years after Prem Granth proves nothing has changed.
Looking back at Prem Granth I can see Rajiv Kapoor as the true inheritor of his father’s mantle specially in the use of music and songs.Rajiv invited the legendary cinematographer Jal Mistry who had lensed Raj Kapoor’s 1949 hit Barsaat,to do the cinematography of Prem Granth. The film is gorgeous to look at, specially the way the song Main kamzor aurat is shot.
Rajiv also invited his father’s Bobby and Prem Rog composer Laxmikant-Pyarelal to do the music in Prem Granth.He also asked Raj Saab’s muse Lata Mangeshkar to sing just one more time for the illustrious R K Banner. The theme song Main kamzor aurat yeh meri kahaani mere aansooon se hai ganga main pani remains an epic in itself.Magnificently worded(Anand Bakshi) , composed and rendered, the song is a colossal achievement , and evidence of how closely Rajiv was affiliated to his father’s vision.
If only Prem Granth avoided morbidity . Madhuri Dixit’s rape sequence is so explicit and sadistic it borders on the gratuitous.If Raj Kapoor had made Prem Granth he would have not shot his heroine’s physical desecration at all. There is more body here than soul, and that’s where Rajiv and his father parted ways.
Legendary singer Mukesh’s son and actor Neil Nitin Mukesh’s father Nitin Mukesh cannot stop missing his friend Rajiv Kapoor.
“My father and Rajiv’s father were very close friends . Raj saab openly used to say that Mukesh was his voice. The closeness was passed on to his children. The Kapoors are my own family. Now we’ve lost four members of that family within a year.First went Krishna Aunty(Mrs Raj Kapoor). Then her daughter Ritu who was like my sister. Krishna Aunty and Ritu were like angels,hard to say who was more enlightened,maybe Krishna Aunty had the edge because of age and experience. Then I lost my dear friend and brother Chintu (Rishi) in April last year. Now even before I’ve recovered from the shock I’ve lost another brother.”
Rajiv Kapoor, says the veteran singer Nitin Mukesh, was an absolute favourite of all. “He was a charmer, he was kind generous warm caring and filled with love. All our conversations were about love love love and more love. I must tell you , though,Chimpoo( Rajiv) was closer to my younger brother Mohnish who is no more. I was closer to Chintu(Rishi). But Chimpoo and I also bonded really well.”
Nitinji spoke to Rajiv Kapoor recently. “The last conversation we had was about three weeks ago. Rajiv who had built himself a beautiful bungalow in Pune was in Mumbai visiting Daboo(elder brother Randhir Kapoor) .He wanted to come and see me. I told him to come at once. ‘Let me work it out.When I come I will stay for at least two days with you,’ he told me. I told him to come soonest , his room was ready. But before we could meet he was gone forever.”
Nitinji recalls Rajiv’s visits with pleasure. “He would come with his live-in partner Sunita whom he never married(for reasons best known to Chimpoo). But she was a lovely lady, a former airhostess, I think. She would keep telling me how handsome my son Neil was. A charming woman. Chimpoo was not very lucky in love. He had married a lady named Aarti, but that ended in divorce. He showered affection on my sons Neil and Naman and told me, ‘Yeh tere bete nahin mere hain.’ At Neil’s wedding Chimpoo stayed for all the three days. He was dancing singing entertaining everyone as though it was his own brother’s wedding. He had so much love to give. I miss him so much.”