BENGALURU: The big film of the era, the one that everyone was talking about was Satyam Shivam Sundaram, a big-budget blockbuster being made (largely in secret) by Raj Kapoor, the great movie mogul who was the darling of the film trade after the superhit Bobby which he had made after a series of flops.
The interest peaked when photos from the shoot location were leaked. They showed the heroine, Zeenat Aman, wearing blouses that revealed much more of her bosom than had ever been shown before in Hindi cinema. Raj Kapoor got angry, sued the publication that had run the pictures and the film became the subject of even more public interest.
So, here was my idea. Time had done a story on the American director Stanley Kubrick while he was shooting Barry Lyndon. It was called ‘Kubrick’s grandest gamble.’ I took the issue to Aroon and suggested that we do the same sort of story on Raj Kapoor. If Time could do it, why couldn’t India Today? I knew how Aroon’s mind worked by then and reckoned that the Time parallel would do the trick.
It did.
I got the go-ahead. But as Aroon pointed out, Raj Kapoor had not spoken to anyone. Why would he speak to us?
‘Because of you, Aroon,’ I said and saw him wince.
There was a backstory to this. Long before he moved to Delhi, V.V. Purie, Aroon’s father, had been a film financer. He had financed most of Raj Kapoor’s films till he gave up on the film finance business in the sixties. Raj Kapoor, I argued, could not say no to the Puries. Aroon was sceptical but saw the point. He spoke to his father and to Mohini Bhullar and our Raj Kapoor chase began.
It was a frustrating experience because, in that pre-mobile phone era, Raj Kapoor was never available. He was always out shooting. (This was true. But he could have called back)
Finally, with our deadline approaching, we had to think of a plan B. I suggested that we do a cover story on Zeenat Aman instead. She was the hottest heroine in Bollywood and was currently shooting in Bangalore with Rex Harrison for an international film called Shalimar. (You may not have heard of it though; it would easily win a place on any list of the Worst Films Ever Made.)
This time, I took the initiative. I called the Ashoka hotel in Bangalore where Zeenat was staying. It took only two tries and she took my call. Yes, she said. She would do an interview. But how? She had no plans to return to Bombay.
I would fly to Bangalore, I told her.
‘Really? Just to interview me?’ she asked, delightedly. ‘Yes. Just for you.’ It is a measure of how badly off the media were in those days that the notion that a journalist would fly to Bangalore just for an interview (with the film producer not paying for the ticket) was so startling. But Aroon recognized that good journalism cost money. So I flew to Bangalore and spent two days at the Ashoka interviewing Zeenat - who, by the way, was lovely and charming.
I got back to Bombay, thrilled that we had a story only to discover that V.V. Purie had finally got through to Raj Kapoor and he had agreed to not only do the story but also to give us stills from the movie. I decided to put together a Time magazine-like package: the main story on Raj Kapoor, a second article on Zeenat and a guest column by Devyani Chaubal, the leading gossip columnist of the day.
Excerpted from ‘A Rude Life: The Memoir’ by Vir Sanghvi with permission from Penguin Random House.