Rajiv (Chimpoo) Kapoor was a zinda-dil human being with zero ego - Chaitanya Padukone

It is with utter shock and initial disbelief that I finally reconciled to the tragic fact  that buddy-actor-director Rajiv Kapoor, (nicknamed Chimpoo ) is no more - Chaitanya  Padukone

Rajiv kapoor was a jolly, jovial and zinda-dil human being

A jolly, jovial yet zinda-dil human being, Rajiv knew his acting craft and had a sense of pride having worked with his legendary showman director father Raj Kapoor saab in the spectacular musical movie ‘Ram Teri Ganga Maili’ .

When I began my film-journalism career, I met Rajiv on the sets of  his movie in his make-up room.

Contrary to my wrong impression, that he would possibly turn out to be snobbish, Rajiv surprisingly was humility personified.

Not only did he strike a warm-rapport with me he, even started doing masti-mazaak with me and we had an off-the-record long chat-session even as he casually reclined on the bed. 

As compared to his eminent lead actor elder brothers Randhir and Rishi, who have a large number of landmark musical movies to their credit

Thereafter we hit-it-off and had a long-standing bonding  for decades after that. It was a  debatable issue that whether Rajiv should have been hyped as the next-junior version of Shammi Kapoor as part of the publicity campaign of ‘Ek Jaan Hain Hum’.

Incidentally, in that movie,’Ek Jaan..’, Shammi-ji played Rajiv’s screen-father and Rajiv even performed in one of the songs like Shammi-ji did in ‘Teesri Manzil’. 

As compared to his eminent lead actor elder brothers Randhir and Rishi, who have a large number of landmark musical movies to their credit.

Rajiv will come-alive on screen as an actor with producer Ashutosh Gowariker’s sports-drama ‘Toolsidas Junior’

The choosey Chimpoo was seen  in only a handful of around 14 films including ‘showman’ director Nasir Hussain’s Zabardast (1985), as a lead actor between 1983 and 1990.

Later the junior Kapoor, also dabbled in direction with ‘Prem Granth’ (1996) which had a touchy taboo subject-undercurrent of ‘multiple rape’ .

Currently if all goes well, Rajiv will come-alive on screen as an ‘actor’ with producer Ashutosh Gowariker’s sports-drama ‘Toolsidas Junior’ directed by Mridul  which also stars Sanjay Dutt.

By the way besides the R K banner immortal songs, one of Rajiv’s favourite tracks ( also picturised on him) was ‘Jab Chaaha Yaara Tumne sung by Kishore Kumar, composed by R D Burman from the movie Zabardast’.  RIP Rajiv, we will all miss you.

Some more photos of Rajeev Kapoor: 

Rajeev Kapoor at RK's Ganesha visarjan at RK Studio, Chembur in Mumbai on Wednesday Evening