Raj Kapoor: The Master at Work – Rahul Rawail on his mentor

(In this week’s India Today, my review of Rahul Rawail’s chatty new book about his "Raj uncle" who became "Raj sahab")

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The first time Rahul Rawail – aged barely 16 – saw Raj Kapoor in action on a film set, “it was like watching him conduct a symphony”. This experience was followed by many others of its type. “I saw the Immortal Master weave his magic”, he tells us in this book’s prologue; later descriptions include “the puppeteer who deftly manipulated the strings”, “the one man who was the epicenter of Indian cinema”, and “the most distinguished filmmaker and the world’s most competent teacher”.

Rawail, a childhood friend of Rishi Kapoor, began assisting Raj Kapoor on Mera Naam Joker, and went on to work on Bobby – two films, very different in content, tone and scale, that represented a transitional period in RK’s career. Mera Naam Joker was not only his pet project, a grand epic (some would say grand folly), but also the last film he directed where he played the lead role, and its commercial failure cemented the passing of an age. Bobby, a teenage love story which became a superhit, represented a new beginning centred around a new generation. Rawail was around for both (as well as the RK productions Kal Aaj aur Kal and Dharam Karam), and he provides many inside stories, both about the making of these films and more generally about Raj Kapoor’s working methods, quirks, and his knowledge of the many departments of filmmaking.

Here are anecdotes about RK as technician, editor, teacher, director of actors… and as gourmand too, a running theme being his love for food, which led him to go out of his way to catch the Deccan Queen to Pune so he could enjoy the train’s distinct meals. (The long editing sessions, we learn, began with everyone spending over an hour deciding on the vast menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner.) Here also are accounts of the “Dambara nights”, where iconic scenes from RK films were screened, and of musical addas that involved the substitution of obscene “dummy lyrics” while putting together what eventually became gentle, timeless songs. There are analyses of scenes such as the “trilateral shot” featuring the three protagonists in the Sangam climax. And there are entertaining asides about the eccentricities of the actor Prem Nath (Raj Kapoor’s brother-in-law), who, going by his appearances here, could well have been a memorable comic figure in a fictional work.

In terms of writing and structuring, The Master at Work is very uneven, with more than a fair share of typos – starting with the very first sentence of a Foreword where the word is spelt "forward" – but its strength lies in the personal, conversational tone. Biographical works are frowned upon when they treat their subjects with dewy-eyed reverence, but this book wasn’t intended as an objective study – the lens (or the POV) is a very intimate one. Besides, though Rawail is consistently respectful of his mentor, reading between the lines one gets a sense of humility and hubris, pride and self-deprecation, jostling against each other in RK’s personality – something that has been discussed in other studies, such as Madhu Jain’s book The Kapoors.

RK Studios, where Rawail began his apprenticeship, was a shrine for the youngster who would later become a director himself – helming some notable films of that unfairly-maligned decade, the 1980s, such as Arjun and Dacait. Importantly, then, this book is partly about Rawail as well, and not just because it ends with a few chapters about his own, RK-influenced work, including a candid account of his clashes with actor-producer Rajendra Kumar during the making of the 1981 Love Story.

Contemporary Indian film literature – the anecdotal or gossipy variety anyway – is so full of repetition, of familiar stories recycled, that it’s sometimes just a relief to come across a singular perspective. At one point Rawail tells us that even today when he watches the party scene in Bobby, all he can see is two junior artistes gobbling up expensive pista and badaam that had been provided in rationed quantities, an incident which caused him much stress during the shoot. It’s the sort of observation that you could only possibly find in this book, and there are many others like it. If this is what a hagiography can be like, bring on a few more.

P.S. from the book – here is an account of the composition of a Mera Naam Joker song that wasn’t used. (Those with delicate sensibilities, avert your eyes from the image on the left.)

Of all things, this reminded me of a bonfire evening during a trip to Kabini a few years ago. During one of those soirées that I always feel very out of place in, a fellow we had just met began singing old Hindi-film songs like “Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein…” Except that he replaced some of the songs’ words with “dirty” ones, mainly slang descriptions of genitalia and such, thus skilfully altering the original meanings.

What was interesting, though, was that he sang well, and soulfully. If you could listen only to the cadences of his voice, blocking out the words (and this is something I usually do while listening to Hindi film songs anyway; my brain prioritises the tune over the lyrics), it was obvious that he had a real feel for the songs. The whole thing became tedious after a while (as these things tend to do), but while it lasted it was brilliantly funny and vulgar and moving, and other things in between. Remembering that evening much later, I thought about the associations that get built around human constructs like words with specific meanings; how one random combination of syllables, one turn of phrase, draws gasps of genteel appreciation while another is labelled obscene or unfit for polite company.
Anyway, do read this passage from the RK book. Regardless of the lies that some of you believe about the old days being oh-so-refined-and-sophisticated, it’s likely that many of the beautiful, gentle old melodies that we love were created in bawdy circumstances.