Just for the other side

‘Duniya’ gives a rare glimpse of an actor, who otherwise got to do mostly similar kind of lover boy characters throughout his career… Rishi Kapoor

The biggest loss when a film fails to connect with the audiences, or when it’s forgotten with the passage of time, is some performance that otherwise would have been counted as stellar had the film succeeded. Many a times interesting performances are discovered in hindsight and while they suffer the tyranny of the whole being lesser than the sum of parts, in some cases they often end up becoming milestones in an actor’s career albeit retrospectively.

In his four and a half decade long career Rishi Kapoor has played many fascinating roles, but he was mostly doomed to play single-note characters that rarely allowed him to display any variation. Right in between his carefree lover-boy numbers of the 1970s and his stint in the action or family drama multistarrers between mid to late 1980s, Kapoor played hoodlum with a heart of gold in ‘Duniya’ (1984) and portrayed a character that one wouldn’t ideally associate with him.

Kapoor’s misguided swindler in the film is a typical young lead character that elder brother Randhir Kapoor often played in films like ‘Haath Ki Safaai’ (1974) or Amitabh Bachchan in ‘Hera Pheri’ (1974) or ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’ (1977) but in ‘Duniya’ his was the second lead who had to keep pace with Dilip Kumar in a more classical author backed role.

‘Duniya’ was written by Javed Akhtar following his split with Salim Khan and directed by Ramesh Talwar, a former assistant of Yash Chopra and the director of ‘Doosra Aadmi’ (1977) and ‘Baseraa’ (1981). Incidentally the same year, 1984, also saw Chopra direct the thespian in ‘Mashaal’ (1984), a film that easily overshadowed ‘Duniya’ in spite of a cast that included Rishi Kapoor, Amrita Singh, Pran and Ashok Kumar in a very intriguing cameo.

Of course, ‘Duniya’s half-baked script that ran on multiple tracks and its inherent inability to fully develop the younger lead’s, Kapoor, narrative also contributed. The film is primarily a revenge drama where Mohan Kumar (Dilip Kumar) is framed for the murder of his friend and a shipping tycoon, Dinesh Varma (Pradeep Kumar), and ends up losing his wife and son along with his freedom.

Years later Kumar emerges from the prison and plots his revenge on Jugal Kishore aka 'J.K.' (Pran), Balwant Singh Kalra (Amrish Puri) and Prakash Chandra Bhandari (Prem Chopra) – the trio that used to work for Dinesh Varma and whose illegal activities were unearthed by Mohan. Once out of the prison Mohan tracks down Dinesh’s daughter Roma (Amrita Singh) and adopts her but he is unable to find his son, Ravi (Kapoor). Fate brings them together but not in the way Mohan would have liked.

A small time crook, Ravi loves to fix cards and a chance meeting with Roma brings him in contact Mohan but like Ravi, Mohan, too, is unaware about their relationship. Ravi impresses Mohan and inches closer to Roma and pretends to fall in love all to con her later. While Ravi starts falling in love for real J.K. employs him to spy on Mohan and even kill him. When Roma learns of Ravi’s plans she breaks up with him but by now Ravi is a changed man committed to saving both Mohan and Roma from J.K., who was also responsible for the death of his mother (Saira Banu in a cameo).

For a straight on revenge drama ‘Duniya’ tries to pack in a sweet love story (Ravi-Roma), a gang war (J.K. and Co. versus Mohan Kumar along with a benefactor Puri (Ashok Kumar), whom the latter meets in jail), the coming of age of a vagrant (Ravi) and also a father-son saga (Mohan-Ravi) but ends up spreading itself too thin to accommodate them all. Released at a time when wholesome entertainers in the context of popular Hindi cinema were meant to encompass all genres in some varying degree, ‘Duniya’ is what today one might call a typical 1980s Hindi film.

Close on the heels of ‘Shakti’ (1982) and accompanying ‘Mashaal’ Dilip Kumar’s Mohan Kumar is tedious and even insipid at places, which being the highlight of the film ends up dulling the entire exercise. By comparison, Kapoor makes the proceedings livelier and infuses a kind of effervescence that makes the scenes featuring him such as his introduction, where he appears to be an upright citizen but cons an innocent bystander or the one where he talks to himself while fixing cards, burst with energy.

But what truly makes Kapoor exceptional in this otherwise forgotten film is how his character goes through a gamut of emotions that one wouldn’t imagine him in. In fact, the role gives Kapoor a shot at expressing all the nava rasasas and the ease with which he dispels them makes it a treat to watch. When Ravi’s intentions are revealed and Roma leaves him, Kapoor displays guilt and regret in a manner that is far removed from the leading men in Hindi cinema.

The sheer shame in his eyes and his frenzied body language where he tries to reason with Dilip Kumar is one of the best that one would ever see Kapoor at. Unfortunately the limited appeal of ‘Duniya’ at the time of its release and it being somewhat lost to time has deprived fans and followers of popular Hindi cinema a chance to enjoy Rishi Kapoor in an unexpected way.

- Gautam Chintamani is the author of the best-seller ‘Dark Star: The Loneliness Of Being Rajesh Khanna’ (HarperCollins, 2014) / tweet him -@gchintamani