Unquestionably ‘Satyam film Shivam Sundaram’ was Raj Kapoor at his most theatrical and remorseless a 1978 chorale to the fractionate amid body and soul where a humble village girl’s “ordinary face” and golden voice emerges as the engine of a very messy love story, think devotion, desire, and social judgement piled into one melodramatic machine. The film was enormously contentious on release, and backstage it was a saga too: Reportedly it was Raj Kapoor’s imagination of the role in many shapes (he even said he first visualised the story around Lata Mangeshkar’s voice), several leading actresses, Hema Malini, Dimple Kapadia and Vidya Sinha among them, turned it down owing to its demands here were near-misses on the male lead before Shashi Kapoor was cast. The film opened on Holi, ran long in theatres, and refused to be quietly filed away as just another romance.
And then there’s Zeenat Aman, who, by every story, had to battle to be watched for the role of Roopa. She has spoken on.how Raj Kapoor didn’t initially picture her for the part because of her modern image, and how she had to persuade him, turn up differently, and make him rethink the entire film. What followed was a performance that was sensual sans stunt, wounded without pleading, and brave where the script demanded bravery.
Raj Kapoor the showman wrapped everything in poetry, widescreen frames, songs doing the emotional heavy lifting, and a moral question dressed in Technicolor, but it is Zeenat who keeps the film alive when the melodrama threatens to topple. That collision, a director in love with spectacle and an actor who refused to be decorative, is exactly why Satyam Shivam Sundaram still provokes debate, awe, and a slightly guilty, glorious nostalgia.
News Edit KV Raman
