Dastangoi’s production on Raj Kapoor, like each of its productions is an experience to listen to and watch as well. Based on a resurrected form of storytelling lost to the past few centuries, Dastangos, as in the storytellers recreate a tea stall discussion on topics. This edition was about Raj Kapoor, held in Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium on the 5th of December 2024.
With extensive research and apt positioning of facts chronologically and logically, the storytellers without being explicit conveys compellingly that all of Raj Kapoor’s productions are snatches of his autobiography. Prithviraj Kapoor also plays himself as Mughal e Azam, as Sikander and as Justice Raghunath as much as Raj Kapoor is only himself in Awara, Anari, Aah, Aag, Barsat and the many films those he made. Always a director at heart, he took to acting mainly to keep the money flowing in for the kitchen that fed five children to run along.
Creativity and finances were always cross purposes, Raj Kapoor braved financial ruin and even destitution to pursue his dreams to bring sheer joy on the silver screen. Angered whenever the producers spoke about money, Raj Kapoor turned arrogant and even eccentric whenever he felt that cinemawallahs made money out of artistry. For him, Sarswati and Lakshmi stayed apart, evil rivals of each other. His wife, who never even uttered a complaint about her difficulties concerning the purse remained the silent woman who stood like a massive mountain of support behind the greatest showman ever.
Raj Kapoor’s first lost love was his teacher in school, the woman whom he searched everywhere as the transcendental as well as the residual symbol of purity, rising above every corruption in the world. This was the pursuit of Saraswati. Nargis, Vaijayanthimala, Padma, Padmini Kolhapure and his other heroines were his constant search for the goddess in a living form. When once asked in an interview why he clad his women on screen so scantily, Raj Kapoor said that because they were pure.
Raj Kapoor struggled emotional battles too with a disciplinarian and depriving father, a father whose approval he desired but never got, a father, who instead of extending shelter threw him repeatedly out of the house, a father who he never seemed to make proud, he remained the eternal Awara, a man who fitted nowhere, a man who belonged nowhere and a man who had no anchor. He imagined himself as a fakir, a man without a roof above his head, a man who had nowhere to go when the sun went down. Sleeping on the floor even in five-star hotels, Raj Kapoor’s only attachment seems to be the whisky and food, and indeed he was a walking encyclopedia of food joints.
The essential Awara or the Fakir helped Raj Kapoor explore the streets of cities, highways of the country, abandoned spaces of the villages, each of which appeared in his films; there is nothing in Raj Kapoor’s cinema that has not been a part of his firsthand experience of life.
Colour stunned and numbed him for a while till he made his hugely successful venture, Sangam, experimental in cinematography but totally a commercial entertainer without the usual social messages of Raj Kapoor.
In more than one way, Raj Kapoor measured himself against Satyajit Ray, both having created a new interest in Indian cinema abroad, both being influenced by the Italian neorealism. But Ray kept an arrogant aloofness from Raj Kapoor, while Raj Kapoor, hurt by his indifference made a film with the Bengali theatre director, Shambhu Mitra, yet another of his iconic production, Jaagte Raho. It was a bilingual film but to be one upon Ray, he inserted a bhangra, which entered the parlance of the Bengalis of the generation as a vernacular adage, kya main jhoot boleya.
As all geniuses do, Raj Kapoor also an out of stories, his soul exhausted of its song, his body bereft of rhythm, it was then that he decided to make the biggest project of his life, his dearest film, his autobiographical character, Mera Naam Joker. The ruin of the film, ruined him financially, crushed him emotionally but more than that, he felt let down by the world. For the first time, he misread the pulse of the people and misjudged their tastes. After the magnificent success of Awara in the Soviet Union, Krushchev analyzed the popularity of the film as a whiff of hope and optimism in war torn Russian empire. Unfortunately, the Joker could no longer transport that joy to his audience; the joker could not make the viewers laugh and with this, the joker’s existence came into a jeopardy; the generation of film goers rejected Raj Kapoor lock, stock and barrel.
The rejection of the joker was a rejection of Raj Kapoor; with empty rooms, empty studio, empty hands and empty purse, Raj Kapoor, suddenly resurrected with Bobby. Where no one believed that he could still make films, Bobby rocked the box office with newcomers and a youthful love story, derived from the many Archie comics that he was addicted to. From then onwards, it was only success for him; letting go of himself and his lifeworld, Raj Kapoor now looked to the new generation, new age, new love, new values, new challenges and here recovered his calling of film making. Forever an ascetic, a fakir, Raj Kapoor had to take on the role of a social elder, thinking of the new generation, entertaining them without putting himself as a frame bomber.
It was not failures but his successes that would make Raj Kapoor develop signs of insanity, often creating a nuisance of himself, reacting out of control to situations and even madness in pursuing the train that served good food.
The tragedy of Raj Kapoor’s life is that nothing of it remains; neither as the relic of his studio and museum, nor as his legatees, all of whom are mediocre stars and none is a producer. Only that little children are still named Raj and Nargis across Russia and central Asia, shows that the hope he delivered in the war-ravaged countries, continues in their hearts. The tune that every host in the erstwhile Soviet Union must play at parties and gatherings is Awara Hoon Main. It is their unofficial national anthem.
All reactions:
11Madhusree Banerjee, Nandan Dasgupta and 9 others
Secondsaturn's Blog 