Remembering Rishi Kapoor: I don’t think this is the end of his journey, says Leena Yadav

Rajma Chawal director Leena Yadav recounts the experience of working with actor Rishi Kapoor, who passed away on April 30, after battling cancer.

Everyone who has come close to Rishi Kapoor, only has words of praise for him. Leena Yadav, who directed him in Rajma Chawal, is no different. Today, with Rishi Kapoor’s demise, Yadav feels a part of her soul is lost -- a part that is “filled with memories of a lifetime”.

Director Leena Yadav and late Rishi Kapoor on the set of their film Rajma Chawal.

Kapoor, 67, breathed his last at a hospital in Mumbai on Thursday (April 30), after his two-year-battle with leukaemia.

“How can you possibly say enough about Rishi Kapoor?” Yadav asks, and continues, “It has been the most amazing experience of my life to work with him. By talking about a part of a certain part of our life, we tend to most of the times compartmentalise our life and experiences. That isn’t right. I had a so many conversations with him and they were so fulfilling. I haven’t met anybody like him.”

When she met Kapoor for the first time, Yadav recalls, there was something very endearing about the actor. “He was in so in the moment... He was one of the most beautiful people to work with. I felt like I spent a part of my life with him in Chandni Chowk in that one day when we all gorged on street food and walked around in the lanes and by-lanes. Both Rishi ji and my husband are foodies and they would end up talking about it all the time,” she adds.

Yadav shares that she never met somebody so “childlike yet mature”. That, she points out, in a way also defined his acting prowess. “He had a certain magic about him. He would just lighten up the screen and hold your attention. It feels like a new journey has begun for him, a human like him would shine wherever he is,” says the filmmaker.

Recounting some moments from the shooting of Rajma Chawal in Delhi, she shares that they would have him come to shoot on a scooty because the lanes of Chandni Chowk were narrow and cars couldn’t enter certain areas.

“But he would prefer walking. On his way, he would speak to shopkeepers, people on the road. By the third day he became one of them. That’s how he would embrace people and places, easily. His passion for food and music would get us going,” she adds.

Kapoor was a man of real emotions and wisdom, according to Yadav. “You would just have sit and listen to him and by the end of it you would get to know about a lot of things. He was straightforward. There would be times he would ask, ‘Why are you taking this shot? I don’t think you would use this one.’ He was so unfiltered, uncensored. The reason why he was so relevant even today and would continue to be in future… I don’t think this is the end of his journey. This can’t be it,” Yadav says.

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