Raj Kapoor is many things to many people: producer, director, actor, editor, musician and story-teller, a man of many moods and an acknowledged patriarch of India’s film-making industry. He is also known to the world as an extraordinary showman, lover, idealist, sage and reformer. Raj Kapoor has always been a controversial figure. Although his films always evoked extreme reactions, he knew that mass audiences had made him, and he never deserted them. There will be endless debates about his exact contribution to the art of cinema, but few can deny that he was the greatest entertainer known to Indian films, the last true movie mogul of Indian cinema. Raj Kapoor worked with the cinematic tradition he inherited, made modifications and added new elements to it, and thus created a popular art form that was consonant with his temperament and view of life. He infused a distinctive mode of popular romantic sensibility into Indian cinema. Raj Kapoor has been portrayed in various ways. He was imperious and majestic, a dreamer of big dreams; his creations were clearly several times larger than the R.K. Studios, which remains a living monument to one man’s vision, energy and enterprise. In this book his daughter records the lesser-known facets of his magnificent personality, without interpreting his thoughts, so that when readers thumb through the pages, they may feel his presence.
