YOU CAN NOT TAKE AWAY RISHI KAPOOR AND IRRFAN KHAN BECAUSE THEY LIVE FOREVER

Ali Peter John

There was a wave of sorrow on the first day, which was followed by a storm which could not be stopped in just two days. Not only the film industry, but entire the country was engulfed in the kind of unprecedented misery over the untimely deaths of two great actors of two different times and two different classes but equally talented.First it was Irrfan Khan and then before the country could wake up to a new morning, people were finding it  absolutely difficult to believe that the evergreen,

energetic and endlessly talented Rishi Kapoor had left for the great beyond and they struggled with their mobiles and other sources of finding the truth about Rishi Kapoor ,but before they could know what had happened, Rishi Kapoor had entertained doctors and the staff at the hospital attending on him and trying their best to save him with his brand of entertainment which has been a part of the lives of the people of India and even abroad for almost fifty years....

Rishi Kapoor (or Chintu or Chintu ji as he was known even when he had become a grandfather) Was born with the talent he had inherited from his grandfather,Prithviraj Kapoor and his father, Raj Kapoor, the greatest showman of India. His father always wanted to groom him as a director and we have seen him pushing trolleys and camera stands and even being whacked on his back by his father when he made any mistake while shooting as one of his many assistants, but it was a quirk of fate that almost forced his father to launch him as the hero in "Bobby "which changed the fortune of both the father and son and RK Films.

From" Bobby "to the late seventies, Rishi Kapoor was "the Rishi of romance "and played the ultimate lover boy who sang ,danced and romance his way to the hearts of more then twenty- eight-heroines ,from Dimple Kapadia to Sridevi .He had girls like Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla and even Divya Bharti who were years younger than him as his romantic interests. "The Rishi Raj of Romance "was so strong that it gave work to leading music directors, singers,lyricists and choreographers a new lease of life and they were and still are grateful to "Chintu Baba".

He had to fight a tough battle to break his image as the romantic hero, but was not allowed to ,not even by his father. It was when all his attempts to change his image failed that he took to directing his first film,"Aa Ab Laut Chale".The film was way ahead of its times and failed at the  box office which broke Rishi's heart. He kept looking for other subjects for two years and gave up direction...

He started a new chapter in his life when he started playing character roles and started with "Chintu ji "which roughly based on his own personality which was the only film he dedicated to his father. He followed it up with other great performances in films like" Agneepath ",  "Love Aaj Kal ",'Kapoor and Sons","Patiala House",Aurangzeb in which he played a negative role and other strong films with him playing strong character and he was at his best in films like" 102 Not Out" and "Mulk "which unfortunately happened to be his last film...

Rishi Kapoor was not only a great, natural and hard-working actor, but also a good human being (every one who has had some interaction with him will vouch for this fact which is very rare in  the industry where he spent all his life)

One of his most lovable qualities was about how he showed his admiration and respect for all his elders whether they were stars and superstars or watchman and his staff at home. He had the greatest regards  for his father's contemporaries, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand ,his uncle's Shammi and Shashi Kapoor, Lata Mangeshkar (he took  pleasure in telling people how Lata Mangeshkar carried him in her arms as a baby),Amitabh Bachchan with whom he did more than fifteen films and K.A.Abbas who he called "one of the strong pillars of RK Films ".When he built his own bungalow on Pali Hill, he named it "Krishna Raj "after his mother and father.

He was a very different Rishi Kapoor as he kept growing older.He took active intrest almost like a social activist in the

welfare of the people of Pali Hill and it was a sight to see the otherwise very private Rishi Kapoor take part in meetings and protests. He also used social media and his Twitter handle to focus on social evils and had even raised several controversies...

He had a very positive outlook towards life and this helped him to even fight his last big battle with the big C. It is extremely difficult to talk about a man like Rishi Kapoor in the past tense and count him among the dead .How can he who filled the lives of millions with life and love  be dead ?Rishi Kapoor has made sure that he lives on and on in the hearts of people an for all time...

And what does one say about Irrfan Khan, the actor who took the world by a lovable Tsunami with his extraordinary talent ?He had started small with the small screen ,but it took him very little time to capture an audience which had rarely seen talent like his ? The very fact that he strode both Hindi cinema and Hollywood like a  Colossus before he was fifty three ,speaks and will  speak volumes for him as long as talent is talked about.

The contribution Irrfan had made and its impact could be gauged when the entire country came together like one family to mourn his departure from this life. He had proved once and for all that talent could not be hidden or neglected for long.

His biggest plus points were his passion to give his best and to never stop learning and be focused all the time.His wife Sutapa has gone on record to say how he worked on his scripts for several hours in a day and how he had once asked her to revise a script she had written thirteen times and how he had taken her to a police station to let her know a procedure followed by the police. His dedication was so complete he used to go through scripts he had not read even after he came back ,when  he was almost cured after his battle with cancer in London seemed to have come to an end. But alas !

He had so much of the fire and the spirit in him and in his eyes which, could have made him a better and a greater actor in the time to come. But what all could one man however talented he was do when the mysterious forces of life and death were constantly conspiring against him, without their knowing that their conspiracy against a man like Irrfan who was destined to live forever ,would never succeed...

Two great actors gone in two days is not an ordinary phenomenon, especially in these dark times when the world is battling Corona Virus  ,but we can console ourselves with the truth that actors like Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan Khan never die,they only move on to live on for all time.