J. Shruti
Did it register with Kapoor and Aman that Hindi Cinema was, perhaps, an especially male-driven landscape during the recesses of their youth? The former reasoned she was too young to register it because she was whisked off into matrimony at the age of 21 by Rishi Kapoor
the latter listed out her iconic successes, and lathered it with vigorous refusal to let the stardom that emerged from it to be tainted by the uglier insinuations of systemic hierarchies at the workplace.
Anecdotes about Rishi Kapoor’s controlling and possessive behaviour, his fits of bullying on sets — characterised as ‘passion’ to couch and cushion the negative implications in interviews elsewhere— are swapped with a familial ease between Johar and Neetu-ji
Aman, “Ma’am”, shared how she was cast by Raj Kapoor in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) due to a bubbling, leaking passion for the cinema he creates— what is it about these safe recountings that come across as endearing.
Aman’s gait as she entered, containing neither the flashiness, or the whim for it, sticks out in the oddness of this refusal to indulge in ballyhoo. Her approach towards the brazen construing of her love life, and her sexual escapades, is deny, deny and deny.
Is how much it focuses on the veteran actors’ circuitous stardom, their recent resurgence through Kapoor’s second foray into cinema after the death of her spouse and Aman’s arrival on Instagram.