 "Dimple Kapadia turns 64: From Raj Kapoor's Bobby to Christopher Nolan's Tenet, the enviable career of an enigmatic actor")
In a career spanning 48 years and counting, Dimple Kapadia has gone through the drill, and so much beyond. Though her roles have drawn tremendously from the turbulence of her personal life — which has always been under public scrutiny — her filmography is full of quiet, unexplained mystique.
Despite long absences, Kapadia — who turns 64 today — has built an enviable body of work. She is reticent about interviews, but told Mint in 2013, “It takes me some time to get into what I am doing — since I am not a trained actor, I don’t have that skill. I have to think of what I am doing, and how it comes through.”
Kapadia may not be trained in her craft, but she has played astonishingly diverse women with relative ease and conviction. The love-struck teen in Raj Kapoor’s Bobby (1973), the young estranged wife fighting for her dying son’s custody in Mahesh Bhatt’s Kaash (1987), the effervescent spirit in Gulzaar’s Lekin… (1990), and the sexy, svelte cowgirl in Feroz Khan’s Janbaaz (1986) have nothing in common except Kapadia’s physicality. Oh, and the sheer range of her acting prowess.
Women actors who are stubborn about not getting pigeonholed are rare in Bollywood. In a career as long as Kapadia’s, it is easy to forget and get comfortable. But Kapadia did not. She still has not.
After the blockbuster success of Bobby and Sagar (1985), she could have very well continued to be the “cognac-eyed, auburn-haired” heroine, but she chose to be an actor instead. Not content with being just the muse, she became the creator.
Films like Drishti (1990), Rudaali (1993), Krantiveer (1994), Dil Chahta Hai (2001), and Being Cyrus (2005) followed. She made each character her own — as layered, complex, and varied.
Even among her recent films, no two of her mummy or aunty roles are similar. Luck By Chance’s Neena Walia (a veteran actor wanting to launch her daughter in films) is starkly different from Chulbul Pandey’s asthmatic mother in Dabanng, who is worlds apart from Gautam’s (played by Saif Ali Khan) loud Punjabi mother in Cocktail (2012).
And then, just when you begin to question how many versions of a Bollywood mum can an actor possibly do, she goes out and does a Christopher Nolan film in _Tenet._ That is the brilliance of Kapadia’s unpredictability.
Today, on her birthday, I celebrate her through three of her iconic films. Each served as a milestone in her career, cementing her position as a frontrunner with a mind of her own.
Bobby
She was 16, and she looks it. This blockbuster of a film released almost half a century ago but Bobby’s large wondrous eyes, delicate charm, and young innocence have not aged at all. Her flaming red bikini, polka-dot blouses, and miniskirts may have been all the rage in the ‘70s, but for me, it was the movie’s palpable portrayal of teen romance that stood out.
Since the release of Bobby, the template (class difference, opposing families, iconic music, gorgeous debutants) has been overused to the point of banality. I have consumed a sizeable share of such films over the years, but I watched Bobby only last year. Despite the overfamiliar filmi tropes, I fell in love — much like an entire generation — with this spunky, elfin girl. I saw what director Raj Kapoor must have seen when he decided to cast her. I also saw why a matinee idol 15 years her senior married her even before the film could release.
Rudaali
A lot had happened with Kapadia before she agreed to play Shanichari in this Kalpana Lajmi directorial. She had separated from Rajesh Khanna after a tumultuous few years together, and was a single mother of two young girls. She had come a long way from being the wide-eyed, hopeful teen who wore hot pants and sang love songs.
In Rudaali, Kapadia plays a lower-caste Rajasthani village woman who is spurned by everyone around her because they think she is ill-omened. Kapadia plays the luckless woman — who, despite her many misfortunes, cannot cry — with such poignancy, that it won her a National Award (her only so far). If you have not watched this film, you must— for its haunting music, outstanding performances, meditative cinematography, masterful handling of a sensitive story, and Kapadia, of course.
Dil Chahta Hai
Though Kapadia had already played several complicated women on screen, Tara Jaiswal was nothing like any of her other characters. A middle-aged, alcoholic interior designer battling loneliness and pining to be with her daughter, she (along with Akshaye Khanna’s Siddharth Sinha) provides the much-needed gravitas and depth to Farhan Akhtar’s breezy coming-of-age directorial debut.
In an interview with Filmfare_,_ she called Tara “very dark,” adding, “I think she chose me. When I heard the script, I thought it would be great fun. My role was a role to die for.” It was. Never before was a romance between an older woman and a younger man treated so delicately, with such sensitivity and dignity.
Tara is so nuanced and desolate, a lot could have slipped in the hands of a limited actor. But Kapadia handles her so deftly that you find it difficult to put Tara in a box. She makes her mysterious, ensuring there is no room for dislike or pity. Kapadia’s performance is as self-assured as it is graceful in this multi-starrer film teeming with young, popular actors at the peak of their careers.
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All images from YouTube.
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