When Qurbani Crushed Karz At Box Office To Leave Rishi Kapoor In Depression

Rishi Kapoor's autobiography has generated immense interest not only within the film industry but elsewhere as well. And going by the excepts, it appears he has lived up to his reputation, going khullam khulla.

Giridhar Jha

Updated on: 16 January 2017 1:55 pm

Biographies of Bollywood stars, more often than not, turn out to be hagiographies with the protagonists fighting shy of divulging the unflattering details of their lives. Barring Dev Anand's Romancing with Life and, more recently, Shatrughan Sinha's Anything But Khamosh, only a few life stories of the tinsel town actors have been honest and candid accounts of their lives.

But Rishi Kapoor's autobiography, Khullam Khullam: Rishi Kapoor Uncensored, written in collaboration with film journalist Meena Iyer, promises to be different because of the sexagenarian actor's penchant to call a spade a spade.

After all, Chintu, as Rishi is affectionately called, has been known to be an outspoken man who chooses to speak his mind out without bothering about trolls. His Twitter handle has been a revelation of sorts as he has targeted many holy and not so holy cows with similar alacrity and aplomb.

From questioning the naming of majority of the institutions and other important places after the Nehru-Gandhi family to taking on those who were lampooning his niece Kareena Kapoor Khan and her husband Said Ali Khan for naming their newly born child Taimur, he has remained unsparing, with equal measure of scorn and humour.

That is why his autobiography has generated immense interest not only within the film industry but elsewhere as well. And going by the excepts, it appears he has lived up to his reputation, going khullam khulla, talking in details about his Dubai meetings with fugitive Dawood Ibrahim as well as his depression in the wake of failure of Karz at the box office.

Kapoor had worked hard on the movie directed by Subhash Ghai in 1980. It had great songs such as Om Shanti Om and Dard-e-dil, good starcast and a great storyline, albeit flinched from a Hollywood movie on the theme of re-birth, Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975). The pre-release hype had made everybody believe that Kapoor and Ghai had a sureshot winner on hand.

So confident were they that they did not realise that another much talked-about film of the year, Qurbani by flamboyant Feroz Khan was also slated to release on the same day. Khan also had everything at stake, as he had spent his last penny on his movie co-starring Vinod Khanna and Zeenat Aman. He had got a brand new, imported Mercedes smashed in one scene of the movie. It's music, especially Biddu's disco song Aap Jaisa Koi by Pakistani singer Nazia Hassan had also become a rage.

Bollywood gravepine has it Ghai, over-confident about the prospects of Karz, had advised Khan to defer the release of Qurbani.

But, as it happened Qurbani crushed Karz at the box office clash of the biggies, emerging as the biggest hit of the year, leaving even Dostana starring Amitabh Bachhan and Shatrughan Sinha behind.

Karz' failure drowned Kapoor into depression and he has talked about its aftereffects in his book. Ironically, the movie attained the status of an iconic musical in later years and was even remade a few years ago, with Himesh Reshammiya playing the lead. The remake was a bigger disaster, though.

Kapoor, of course, recovered from his depression later. Ghai and he, however, had the solace that Qurbani lost to Karz in the race for the best score of the year at the Filmfare Awards that year but that was only a small consolation.