Dimple Kapadia: Hindi Cinema’s Comeback Queen

Cinema practitioners are nothing if not passionate. These are people who consider themselves deeply lucky because they get to live how most of us want to live – doing what we love. And yet, here is Dimple Kapadia’s candid answer to Rediff when asked which film she enjoyed doing the most: “None. I have never enjoyed working. My heart rate increases even when I am fully prepared. Every shot is a matter of life and death for me, so I don’t enjoy that process.” Kapadia, who has over 90 credits on her IMDb page, is one of the most recognizable faces in the country. She is known to challenge herself as an actor – an endeavour that not only gave her career a second shot after a decade-long sabbatical, but also took her to the glittering peaks of Hollywood at age 63 (hello, Tenet). Kapadia’s honest response to her work says much about who she is while also reminding us just how unromantic the process of being creative can be. 

Kapadia’s life changed when Hindi film legend Raj Kapoor picked her to play the leading lady in his romance film, Bobby (1973). She was only 14 at the time. To debut in a Raj Kapoor film would have been a dream in itself but Kapadia had a larger surprise waiting for her. At 16, months before her film’s release, she was approached by superstar Rajesh Khanna for marriage. Perhaps “approached” is too liberal a word. “I came to know him (Khanna), well, precisely seven days before the marriage,” Kapadia told Indian Express in an interview. “We were going together to Ahmedabad for some kind of a show on a chartered flight. He sat next to me all along but did not utter a word. Just as the flight was about to land, he turned towards me, looked hard into my eyes, and said he wanted me to marry him.” Harbouring a massive crush on Khanna (who was 31 years old at the time), Kapadia agreed to the proposal. They were married six months before Bobby’s release – a film that catapulted Kapadia to stardom. However, she had already left acting at the behest of her husband and she’d return after 12 years, two daughters and a fraught separation. “I returned to films only when I had to look after myself and my children,” she said later in an interview. 

Maybe because of the range of her own experiences, Kapadia’s return enriched Hindi cinema with some of its best depictions of womanhood. Here, we look back at some of her unforgettable roles over the decades. 

The Era of New Beginnings: Bobby (1973)

A few minutes of watching Kapadia in Bobby are enough to understand why she was such a sensation in 1973. Instead of the foxy intensity she’s known for today, Kapadia is endearingly moon-faced in her first film, her voice carrying an unrecognisable timbre of innocence. It’s pleasantly surprising then that Bobby is a firecracker of a character, unabashed about her questions and at ease with repartee – the perfect heroine for a rebellious love story. Kapadia served ravishing looks in the film – her plunging, full-sleeved crop top with a high-waisted skirt is proof that history (read: fashion) joyously repeats itself. (Perhaps the same could be said about her orange bikini, although it was considered scandalous at the time for very different reasons). So lovely was Kapadia in the film that it didn’t matter that she had announced her marriage to Khanna by the time the film was released. Her decision to stop acting though sent ripples of shock across her fandom – perhaps everybody sensed that the industry was losing a gem. 

The Comeback Era: Saagar (1985)

Kapadia's return to the screen was supposed to be with a project  as glamorous as her last – Ramesh Sippy’s Saagar, starring opposite her Bobby co-star Rishi Kapoor and Kamal Haasan, who was rapidly expanding his fame in the Hindi belt of the country at the time. But a delay led to Zakhmi Sher (1984) being released first, turning her comeback into a massive failure. Fortunately, Sippy’s Saagar came through a year later and turned the former into a forgettable blip. On the face of it, Saagar is a swoony romance between a restaurant owner and a rich heir who must fight all odds to be together. Kapadia gets yet another scene of frolicking in the water while Kapoor watches on, but Sippy crafts this scene with such mastery – capturing the glimmering water in the sunset and Kapoor’s mesmerised expression – that it rises above the superficiality with which love (or lust) at first sight can come across. Saagar became a critical and commercial success, becoming India’s official Oscar entry for 1985 and the fifth highest-grossing film of the year. Kapadia had officially arrived once again. 

The Experimental Era: Rudaali (1993)

Rudaali was a rare thing: Its screenplay was adapted by Gulzar from a short story by the legendary Mahasweta Devi, and the film was directed by Kalpana Lajmi, a filmmaker known for her unflinching portrayal of womanhood. Despite its tag of ‘parallel cinema’, Rudaali starred two of India’s most popular faces: Rakhee and Kapadia. Rakhee plays Bhikhni, a professional female mourner (‘rudaali’) hired by the upper caste to make an exhibition of grief and dissembling that is forbidden to those of high-caste status. She finds temporary lodging at Shanichari’s (Kapadia) house, whose unfortunate life unfolds through flashbacks. She is branded as ill-omened at birth (her name comes from ‘shanichar’ because she was born on a ‘shanivaar’, a Saturday). Shanichari battles at the intersection of gender, caste and poverty, barely surviving her alcoholic husband, her son who abandons her and the villagers who ostracise her. Shanichari tells Bhikhni – a woman who is forced to sell her tears – that she has never been able to cry through it all. But when Bhikhni suddenly leaves her with a rotting secret, Shanichari unravels, her shrieks piercing through the village that held her in life-long oppression. Despite great performances by both actors, Kapadia leaves a lasting impact as a lone figure of anguish. Rudaali was one of Kapadia’s many efforts to challenge herself as a performer, a quest fuelled by the world’s insistence of her beauty: “Everybody said you’re beautiful, so you accepted it. But what about a good actress?” she said in a 2012  interview. With projects like Rudaali, Gulzar’s Lekin… (1991) and Govind Nihlani’s Drishti (1990), Kapadia had left nothing to prove to anyone, least of all to herself. The actor never seems to have taken stardom seriously but after the early Nineties, her choices suggest she disregarded it completely. 

The Era of Contentment: Dil Chahta Hai (2001) 

Kapadia appeared in a few roles in the late Nineties, but they’re overshadowed by her turn as Tara Jaiswal, an enigmatic older woman who captures the imagination of a young man in Dil Chahta Hai. Tara and Sid (played by Akshaye Khanna) form an effortless connection the first time they meet, bonding over art. Plans are made to see Sid’s paintings which soon turn into Tara posing for Sid’s portrait. It’s clear to us that she enjoys the young man’s company and that Sid has fallen in love with her. When this is unintentionally revealed to Tara, she flies into a rage fuelled by both shame and guilt. She blames “the younger generation” for their lawless, anything-goes ways, but the scene transforms from chaos to stillness when Sid calmly owns up to the hurt he caused her. He apologises about how she found out about his feelings, but refuses to say sorry for his love, earnestly wishing for only her happiness. Tara is stunned by his response and Kapadia nails the muted absorption of this kindness. It brings to focus her character’s troubled marriage in the past, her periodic and harrowing communication with he ex-husband, hell-bent on making her life worse. Nothing really transpires between the two, and yet their relationship has, to quote the kids these days, all the feels. 

The Boss Era: Tenet/Pathaan

After Dil Chahta Hai, Kapadia truly let loose creatively, with projects like Being Cyrus (2005), where she plays a promiscuous housewife, to Finding Fanny (2014), where she plays a Goan woman with a huge derrière. (She later accused director Homi Adajania of transforming her from ‘Bobby’ to ‘Boba’). When Christopher Nolan handed his brief for an Indian character in Tenet to talent manager Purvi Lavingya Vats, she immediately thought of Kapadia, but the actress was so hesitant to do the part initially that she even suggested another actor’s name. Ultimately, Kapadia was convinced to give an audition. “The charisma and the poise that she has, and the depth of experience which was immediately apparent when I turned up in Mumbai with my video camera,” said Nolan to Twinkle Khanna, when asked why he cast Kapadia. The actor plays the wife of an arms dealer in the film before revealing herself to be a deadly antagonist. The same poise and no-nonsense assertiveness shape her role as mentor and boss in Pathaan. Kapadia convincingly commands the spy team, confident of her place in her glass office. Her send-off is tragic, partly because it involves her face being covered in what looks like prosthetic pimples, but also because she’s yet another sacrifice delivered to the altar of the male hero. Maybe being martyred on the job is better than dying by the oppression of gender? Fortunately, if Pathaan and the recent series Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo are any indication, Kapadia is nowhere near done. She might continue to bless us with powerful characters or walk away from acting just as coolly. All we can do is wait and watch.