The Last Romantic

An Entire Generation of Women Saw in Him Their Dream Guy. He Was the Discerning Director’s Choice. Yet, Shashi Kapoor Had to Wait Long to Get His Due in Indian Cinema

- Madhu Jain

Shashi Kapoor’s crooked canines saved him. Without them he would have been too perfect—and boring, like the impossibly handsome heroes of the silver screen. Despite this tiny imperfection, he was never quite given his due as an actor in Indian cinema until much later in his career: the Padma Bhushan in 2011 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2015 when he was so ill and could only smile feebly. (Strangely, when his elder brother Raj Kapoor was being presented the Phalke award in Rashtrapati Bhavan, he collapsed and was rushed to a hospital, where he breathed his last some weeks later.)

Women lusted after Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna, penned fan letters with their own blood for Rajesh Khanna and admired the histrionics of Amitabh Bachchan. But Shashi Kapoor was the one they fell in love with—mothers and daughters alike, and yes, secretly, grandmothers too. It wasn’t just his u-turn eyelashes or dimpled cheeks. Among the least actorly of film stars, the audience believed in him as a romantic lover. The takeaway from his breakout hit Jab Jab Phool Khile in 1965 was that the actor’s romantic feeling for his leading lady Nanda rang true on the screen.