by AURANGZAIB KHAN
The family house of the legendary actor at the end of a small busy street. PHOTO/Dawn
They say they still wear the traditional Peshawari pagri on festive occasions, the Kapoors of Bollywood. And a gold medal from Prithvi Raj’s acting days in theatres of Peshawar — and Lyallpur, now Faisalabad — is a family heirloom left by the Kapoor patriarch. They lived here in Dhakki, right by Peshawar’s Qissa Khwani Bazaar. How appropriate for a family of celebrated thespians to have roots in the street of storytellers.
The air inside their old haveli is still, the gloom in the empty rooms is like time mourning its own passage, a surrender to dust, to dampness and to death. It is the indifference of a terminal patient to a visitor who brings no hope but stands by the bed.
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In a room where sunlight bursts through the windowpanes with their broken stained glass, I try and imagine the Kapoor family living in the house. All I conjure up is little Raj Kapoor, the Charlie Chaplin of Indian cinema, up to his antics again, in the house he was born. Last I saw him, he was serenading a Bollywood beauty from a treetop on screen. Now he runs ahead of me, a little boy with a stick to dislodge a wasp’s nest embedded in the dark, narrow staircase, to give me safe passage to the floors above.
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