“I am basically… …an ordinary man. I am nothing too big or great. I don’t claim I have any academic qualifications, except that I have been quite aware of what is around me, and hence got to know a little bit of human philosophy. And that is probably what has given birth to the clown in me. And that clown, even at the cost of my tears, tries to make somebody happy.” –Raj Kapoor, the omniscient, who you ought to remember in every interval of life, not because of who he was, but what he was.
Indians are typically obsessed with surnames. But with every changing era, and standing today, the relevance of surnames has become excruciatingly futile, and sometimes controversial too. Because when you mark a legacy with a surname, the other legacies almost go unseen at times. But what is with the Kapoors, then? Why is it still very much in our viscera, followed by the emotion that, as cinema enthusiasts and artists, we carry?
This one-hour single show by Netflix educates you about it. It is the humanness that they carry beyond these surnames—and more so, that they accept that it’s okay if tomorrow they become inconsequential.
Directed by Smriti Mundhra and hosted by Armaan Jain, the documentary tried its best to make us believe that they are just like us—a lineage like that is nothing like us; it is almost an empirical anecdote that one would witness in the show. Oozing with nostalgia and references that keep us glued.
The glossy affair kicks you, but one who is sitting on their average bourgeois settee, having food from their typical sustainable steel plates, might not relate to the lunch the Kapoors are digging into, nor to their fierce obsession with food. But we know that they are extraordinary, and that the family tree has ushered in enough hard work within to keep the legacy going and not fall flat—and that is why they are there, and we are here.
But if you are an artist, or an aspiring artist, know that you will get better takeaways from watching the show, and apparently, it will have nothing to do with the ‘dining’.
First: What Raj Kapoor says in the very beginning.
Second: Jeena Yahan, Marna Yahan… …Iske Siva Jaana Kahan.
