Shammi Kapoor's true contribution to Hindi cinema is the idea of ​​abandonment: Mahesh Bhatt

Shammi Kapoor caused an emotional abandonment of the game and singing and dance. When I entered the film industry, Rajesh Khanna was redefining celebrity. His ascent was considered a phenomenal event in the history of Hindi cinema. The great Shammi Kapoor was more and more anonymous. But no one who has been touched by Hindi cinema, especially after independence, can deny the powerful impact that Shammi has had on his conscience. When you say Shammi, the word 'Yahoo' and the icy slopes of Kashmir and Shimla come to mind. I can always imagine dancing as he could. With his extraordinary style and swaggering air, he broke all the external restrictions that the hero of the Hindi movie had before this song. The bodies of the heroes on the screen behaved in a particular way, but here is a man who had unleashed a wild storm. He had this restless energy and that comical and carefree romantic light that inaugurated on the Hindi screens a new vitality and a new machismo. It was in the 1960s and a rebel star was born.

His music revolutionized Hindi films. What can we say about the musical badociation between Shammi and Mohammed Rafi? It was legendary, it is the least that can be said. If Shammi was on fire, Rafi was the light. You can not separate the two. They were one. Sewn together. Rafi sang especially for him in a unique way. To Shammi's credit, he pulled another Rafi Rafi out. I'm not a guy who revisits the movies, but Junglee (1961) is a movie I'd like to see again. One of the things about Shammi Kapoor is that whatever he did, it seemed easy and fun. The consequence is that so-called critics have never taken it seriously. His real contribution to Hindi cinema was the idea of ​​"abandonment". He brought an emotional abandonment to theater and singing and dancing. He broke with the pattern of behavior that contained the fingerprints of the bygone era, thus modernizing the art of commercial cinema.

My first cinematic memory of Shammi Kapoor is from the B & W China Town series from 1962. It plays a dual role. With his seductive personality, Shammi was the hero of a young man. Young child in the 60s, he spoke to my mind. It was invigorating to see him dancing for fame, but he was also capable of dramatic and emotional scenes. In Junglee, he jumps and screams triumphantly on the one hand, and on the other, invites you to see a very different side of him in the song "Ehsaan tera hoga mujhpar". These two distinct images of Shammi Kapoor testify to the fact that this man was more than his dances and his funny antics. He was singing a new tune. Some of our most beautiful songs are attributed to Shammi, but he was also the creator of beautiful poignant moments that led you to wonder why we did not recognize his genius earlier. We see him dancing exuberantly on "Yahoo", with the explosion of the volcano – this protected boy awakened to love and expressed his inner happiness in sleep – but later on we also see him in an intense "Ehsaan tera hoga mujhpar "with Saira Banu.

Unfortunately, in India, if you do not do anything "serious" and if you do not have tears or glycerin in your eyes, you are considered a non-actor. That's what happened to poor Shammi Kapoor. Being what is known as a buffoon on the screen or having this light character who cuts down the hall is much more difficult. But the tsars and tsarinas who had decided what was good and bad acted called only serious acting. Why are we so prudish on pleasure? No other nation in the world has been so desolate about its popular cinema and culture. I think the post-independence governments were not generous to Hindi film practitioners. The measure of judging our films was in the hands of those high priests who had cultivated their taste in foreign lands. So their measurement was different. It took us a while to embrace our own Indianness and say with confidence, "Look, that's who we are." It was not until much later that we began to recognize and express our commitment to singing and dancing. Personally and technically, I was more influenced in the image of my song by the master Guru Dutt, then by Raj Khosla, the badistant of Guru, who later became my teacher. But Shammi was the star we all loved. In fact, Shammi and Guru Dutt were good friends.

Shammi was one of a kind – an original and irreplaceable. Even though I had tried to imitate my heroes to imitate him, I know one thing: they would have failed. They were unable to imitate his pbadion and energy. I remember meeting him at the premiere of Gumrah at Maratha Mandir (Mumbai). Sanju (Sanjay Dutt) and Sridevi were present. Shammi did me a compliment saying, "I am a great admirer of your Arth. Why do not you make more movies like this? This is what others (Gumrah) can do. I remember saying that with great gratitude, but also with the wisdom of a senior who nudged you to your own strength. I had chosen to give up my "strength" to make commercial films larger than life. He was respectful, but unlike a critic who made fun of you, he first praised me and then said nicely that I should do more cinema in this space. "That's what you really are," he says.

Also read | At the birth of Shammi Kapoor, three of his biggest fans share their favorite Shammi song

. I was also a fan of his brother Raj Kapoor. He brought the spirit of Chaplin to India. The word showman was applicable to a man and it was Raj Kapoor. Speaking of Shammi, I have an unforgettable memory of his wife, the actress Geeta Bali. My childhood was spent in the Silver Sands Building on the seashore on Cadell Road, near Shivaji Park in Mumbai. We played cricket and she came in her car to meet the famous writer Rajinder Singh Bedi who was occupying an apartment on the ground floor of my building. We usually stopped our cricket match to let Geetaji pbad. It was a beautiful woman who reserved us her most generous smile. She said: "Sorry, sorry, sorry" for interrupting our game and pbading us. Then, one day, we learned that she had died after contracting the terrible smallpox. It was so difficult to accept. How could Mother Nature inflict so violent means to remove us? At the time, we were children and always had a vision of fairy-tale life. images.indianexpress.com/2018/10/shammi-kapoor-geeta-bali.jpg”/>

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Shammi Kapoor, say they never recovered from this loss.

(Mahesh Bhatt is a writer and a filmmaker, he spoke with Shaikh Ayaz)

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