Veteran music director Amar Haldipur, who has worked closely with legends like Laxmikant Pyarelal, Khayyam, Rajesh Roshan and Shankar Jaikishan, recently revisited memories from Hindi cinema’s golden era, sharing anecdotes about icons like Raj Kapoor, K Asif and Dilip Kumar.
Haldipur recalled an incident from the time Satyam Shivam Sundaram was being worked on. “The background music of Satyam Shivam Sundaram was being recorded. Raj Kapoor saab’s younger son, Rajiv Kapoor, got into his Ambassador car. I had just taken my payment and was leaving when I saw this. Raj Kapoor came out, opened the car door and saw his son sitting inside. He asked him, ‘Why are you sitting in this car?’ Rajiv said, ‘We are going home, right?’”
What followed, he says, was a moment of firm parenting.
“Raj Kapoor told him, ‘This is Raj Kapoor’s car. The day you become Raj Kapoor, you can sit in it.’ He made him get down and said, ‘Bus number 93 goes to Chembur, take that and go home.’ And he actually had to get down.”
No special treatment, even for family
Haldipur shared another memory from a music session of Kal Aaj Aur Kal, composed by Shankar Jaikishan.
“Raj Kapoor was listening to a song with his eyes closed. In the middle, Rishi Kapoor walked in and sat right in front to listen. After some time, Raj ji opened his eyes and said, ‘Mr Chintu Kapoor, these are Shankar ji, Dattaram, Sebastian… and Raj Kapoor. You are very young, you don’t have the stature to sit here. Please go and sit there.’”
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Rishi Kapoor was then asked to sit near the door. “I’m not lying. The discipline was on another level.”
The humility of legends
Recalling filmmaker K Asif during a shoot at Rajkamal Studios, Haldipur spoke about the easy camaraderie among greats. “During a shoot, K Asif was there with Dilip Kumar. He said, ‘O Yusuf, sit down.’”
Haldipur also spoke about the financial struggles during the making of Mughal-e-Azam.
“When Mughal-e-Azam was being made, it got stalled due to lack of money. The sets, chandeliers and everything, were lying at his house in Tardeo. One man came asking for his payment. K Asif said, ‘There’s a chandelier lying there, take it, sell it wherever you can, and recover your money.’”
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Haldipur said, “Giving respect, taking respect, understanding obedience, nothing was bigger than work for them. If you came to work, you worked. That’s all that mattered.”
Even Amitabh Bachchan wasn’t spared
He ended with an anecdote related to Amitabh Bachchan.
“I remember during a film shoot, cinematographer Dwarka Divecha was handling lighting and said, ‘Arre lambu, come here, I need to do lighting.’ He was calling Amitabh Bachchan ‘lambu’.”
When Raj Kapoor slapped Rishi Kapoor
During an old conversation with India Today, Rishi Kapoor had once recalled the time when Raj Kapoor slapped him.
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“I have been slapped once by my father because at a very young age, I smoked a cigarette borrowed from my father’s make-up man,” Rishi recalled.
Raj Kapoor, called as showmen of Indian cinema, was married to Krishna Kapoor, and the couple had five children—three sons, Randhir Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor and Rajiv Kapoor, all of whom went on to work in films, and two daughters, Ritu Nanda and Rima Jain.
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