Being In Conversation With Mrs Gorgeousbones, Dimple Kapadia

Khalid Mohamed recalls his conversations with the forever young Dimple Kapadia.

Quotable quotes from Dimple Kapadia over the years

I was born with a cleft in the chin but Dad didn’t know the difference between a cleft and a dimple. So I was named Dimple.

Dimple Kapadia

(she recalls with bemusement, and emits that deep throated laugh of hers, which comes up in whoops.)

This is off-the-record. I had been selected by Raj Kapoor for Bobby after months of yes and no. A few months before the shoot was to start, I was diagnosed with leprosy. Miraculously, I healed or else there would have been no Bobby, which served as a comprehensive text-book on acting.

Dimple Kapadia

(this quote is being recalled since the B-town’s sensational Bobby Baraganza girl did eventually go on record about the dreaded disease)

Kaka (Rajesh Khanna) has been consistently misunderstood. He’s a wonderful guy. I was far too young and impetuous when we married. We may have separated, but I still have tremendous regard and love for him. So don’t you dare try to extract any nasty statements from me. Kaka’s superstardom had to be experienced to be believed.

Dimple Kapadia

Ha ha, me and an autobiography? You must be joking. My life has been an open book.

Dimple Kapadia

What’s his problem, yaa. He (a stalwart senior actor) refuses to sign films with me any more. Go, go, ask him what his problem is. I’ve never spoken out of turn, we’ve done films together. A young director came over to ask me to act opposite him but he asked him to cast someone else.

Dimple Kapadia

(clue: the film was completed with the stalwart and another leading lady but wasn’t released following a legal skirmish between two film production houses.)

I should have made my, what you guys call, comeback with Sadma opposite Kamal Haasan. The role done by Sridevi was to die for. The comeback happened with Zakhmi Sher instead. Never mind, I haven’t done too badly after my comeback, have I?

Dimple Kapadia

If you want a tell-all interview with me, bring a big bunch of tiger lilies. You’ll find the best ones at a Breach Candy florist. On second thoughts, just forget it. Write whatever you want, just make me sound intelligent.

Dimple Kapadia

Perhaps I’d have sent those Breach Candy tiger lilies over to Dimple Kapadia on her 60th birthday today (June 8). If I don’t, it’s because the ever-modest Mrs Gorgeousbones is being pampered with a London holiday by her daughters, sons-in-law and an extended functional family.

By the way, she has never needed back-up support for her grey cells. D.K. Dimpla, Dimps, as she is variously nicknamed, has always been into reading (Roald Dahl’s an early favourite), was learning painting at one point– an acrylic-canvas effort I happened to see was of a dreamy, almost intergalactic woman’s face sprinkled with glitter dust.

Plus, she has always related to art and possesses a collection of works by the eminent artist Lalitha Lajmi.

Beetlejuice has my kind of sense of humour. And I want Shah Rukh Khan in the part played by Michael Keaton, no one else will do.

Dimple Kapadia

And there was a time when DK was on her marks, get set to go and direct an adaptation of Tim Burton’s wacky ghost fantasy Beetlejuice. Fishing out its laser disc from her collection, she had disclosed confidently, ‘Fun idea’, but evidently the project and those directorial ambitions fell through the cracks.

DK, as an actress, didn’t worry whether she was swimming in the mainstream or off-stream. Another enterprise, thwarted alas, was an epic TV series for Doordarshan, based on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to be directed by parallel cinema’s luminary Kumar Shahani. Budgetary constraints prevented the serial from happening.

With Kalpana Lajmi’s Rudaali, she snagged her first and only National Award for a performance demanding physical and emotional rigour. Govind Nihalani’s Drishti, dealing with marital discord, wasn’t up to great shakes though, never mind the company of co-stars Shekhar Kapur and the still-to-find-a-toehold Irrfan Khan.

“Have you really seen it?” she’d ask plaintively. “I don’t know anyone who has except at film festivals.”

Dimple Kapadia

As for her enthusiastic participation in Mrinal Sen’s Antareen, revolving around a ‘phone conversation between a loveless wife and a reclusive writer, it didn’t exactly catch Kolkata’s master director at the peak of form.

I can vouch for the fact that DK adored Gulzar who directed her as the lost-in-time spirit in Lekin. Snag ahead:

He’s a class apart, Poetic, imaginative and so gentle with his actors.

Dimple Kapadia

When Gulzar offered her a role in an episode of the TV series Kirdaar, based on literary short stories, she wasn’t so sure. He stopped taking her calls. She requested for a patch-up meeting. Done. Gulzar saab was customarily polite, talked about everything else but about her procrastination. He never cast her again.

Scroll down Dimple Kapadia’s filmography and she’s done them all in her prime: romantic rhapsodies a la Saagar, vendetta tracts (Zakhmi Aurat), contemporary patriotic tracts (Krantiveer), chic crime thrillers (Janbaaz) and multi-starrers (Ram Lakhan). She could be ultra-glamorous and she could be lacerating real.

Her arsenal comprised, among other elements, expressive cognac eyes, a nuanced, resonating voice skilled in Hindustani dialogue delivery, easy body language, and that seductive toss of her auburn hair.

During a career-lull, she produced and marketed scented candles clicked big-time. Frankly, though, her latter-years acting career has been limited. To put it politely, the ‘senior character artiste’ label hasn’t been her best suit.

Take Finding Fanny. Director Homi Adajania, frequently trained the camera on her..er…backside. The sight made me crrrrrringe. DK, yeh tu ne kya kiya? But who knows? I may be in a minority here.

More positively, DK did make an impact in parts commensurate to her age in Dil Chahta Hai, Leela, Luck by Chance, Cocktail and to a degree in Dabangg as Salman Khan’s mummyji. However an iron-strong role, comparable to say Shabana Azmi’s in Neerja, has eluded her.

All aspects and the casting idiosyncrasies whims of Bollywood considered, DK still strikes me as a formidable actress. And to top that, she’s a fiercely independent householder, who has had to come to terms with the premature deaths of her sisters Reem and Simple.

Four decades and some more have elapsed since Bobby. In a compact, individualistically decored apartment in Juhu -- where a Belgian chandelier tops a crate-like dining table -- resides a woman who’s been through the extremes of agonies and ecstasies. And whatever the season, fair weather or foul, there’s always a bunch of tiger lilies.