By Hindustan Times
It was a Kodak moment for Bollywood’s first family. Raj Kapoor (RK) was being conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. But just as his name was announced, he was felled by an asthmatic attack and collapsed in his chair.
For a minute, there has been shocked silence after which the auditorium reverberated with the sound of applause as President Venkatraman walked right down to present the award to RK who was gasping for breath. Soon after, he was rushed to Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences from where ‘critical’ bulletins emerged with grave frequency, lending credence to the conclusion that perhaps the 63-year-old Joker wouldn’t be back for his last laugh.
Barely out of college, I’d seen the legendary actor-filmmaker only in movies, but during that month-long vigil I got to understand the person from reminisces of fellow workers. And on June 2, 1988, when the curtain came down, the tears were for real as I worked on a collector’s special. That was one edition the workers didn’t get to take home because every copy was sold out within minutes.
The showman reached out to the sector from the cover, arms outstretched, a fantastic half-smile on his clown face from the famous Mera Naam Joker still. The film was Raj Kapoor’s dream. He started work on it soon after Sangam in 1964 and it took six years for him to materialise it right into a two-part film chronicling the lifetime of a joker, during the three women he’d loved and lost.
RK found his muses: school teacher Mary, the starry-eyed Minoo Master who befriends him as a boy buddy and Marina, the Russian gymnast in his real life heroines, Nargis, Padmini and Vyjayanthimala.
He reinforced this in his own words in a personalized piece for Screen weekly: “Mera Naam Joker is a movie about laughter, yes, but it surely may be a movie concerning the human heart… A MOVIE about human tragedy…”
The broken heart was his own. In fact, within the last scene, Raju gathers up the fragments and tells the audience, “My show has not ended, nor my story…” Raj Kapoor had planned a sequel however the unexpected debacle left him reeling from a burden of private debts. It took a Bobby (1973) to get him out of the red.
My daughter Ranjika is resistant to the magic of the large top but I'VE fond memories of Gemini Circus where Mera Naam Joker was shot with a 20-member troupe from Russia. This included Kseniya Ryabinkina who was a ballerina from Moscow’s Bolshoi theatre, a clown named Seredia, a few geese, a dog and 3 bears. RK was the ringmaster and for the primary time in his life aroused from sleep before mid-day to orchestrate the show.
The Joker and his Jeena Yahan Marna Yahan Iske Siva Jana Kahan were an essential component of my childhood years. It was only later that I learnt that Raju were as human as you and me and this song crooned by Mukesh have been his last.
His son Nitin Mukesh told me that his father were on a concert tour of Canada while he have been holidaying within the US. An SOS telegram informing him that his father wasn’t keeping too well had brought him to Montreal on August 23, ’76.
Jeena Yahan was the last song of the show and after the primary stanza, Mukesh suddenly stopped and handed over the mike to his son, watching with a grin as Nitin Mukesh kept the legacy going. Four days later, Mukesh was dead.
For Raj Kapoor Jeena Yahan have been the motto of a never-say-die film fraternity. Today it embodies the spirit of Mumbai. Despite repeated terror attacks, it is a city where dreams refuse to die... A city where it doesn't matter what happens, the show must go on…
