Rishi Kapoor with wife Neetu Kapoor and son Ranbir Kapoor. (Photo: Express Archives)
Rishi Kapoor loved his drinks, and he wasn’t shy about admitting it. But, his drinking sometimes got the better of him and while the actor continued to love alcohol, it took a toll on his marital life with wife Neetu Kapoor. Rishi and Neetu got married in 1980, and welcomed daughter Riddhima in the same year. Ranbir Kapoor was born two years later. The Kapoors maintained that they were a united family, but behind closed doors, their family was like anyone else’s, the kind where difficult subjects were sometimes brushed under the carpet, and Rishi’s drinking, was, perhaps, one such subject.
Rishi and Neetu were parents two a daughter and a son, and they saw everything that went on in the house. Neetu found that the Kapoor household functioned on one “cardinal rule”, that no one interfered in each other’s lives. So the phase when the husband and wife were fighting relentlessly, often due to his excessive drinking, Neetu found no allies in the extended Kapoor family. At this time, her only support was her son Ranbir and while he went against his father for the sake of his mother, she knew that it wasn’t fair to him. After all, Rishi was a “very good father.”
Madhu Jain, in her book, The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema, quotes Neetu’s interview with Filmfare, where she said, “I realised that nobody was going to help me, except my son but it wasn’t fair to make a child take sides against a father who was a very good father.” The book was published two years before Ranbir’s debut in the movies in 2007. Neetu said that Ranbir “did tick his father off a couple of times when Chintu (Rishi) got so high that he smashed everything in sight.”
Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor were married for 40 years. (Photo: Express Archives)
Neetu added that Rishi would not remember anything the next day so when Ranbir confronted him, he would just blankly stare at his son. “But his father could never remember anything the next day. I felt so sorry for poor Ranbir, who hated having to confront an innocent-faced father who just stared back in complete amnesia.”
In an earlier chat with Nikhil Kamath on his YouTube channel, Ranbir opened up about this phase where he recounted that he was “always scared” and “on edge”. “My parents went through a lot of fights. We lived in a bungalow, so I have spent most of my childhood on the staircases, hearing them fight. I was always scared and on the edge.” Talking about his father, Ranbir shared in the same chat, “He never shouted at us, never raised his hand at us, but just because around us his temperament was so volatile that it always scared me.”
Here, Ranbir mentioned that his father was a short-tempered man who loved his alcohol, “I believe my father was a short-tempered man, but he was a good man. He was somebody who loved his family, work, food, and alcohol. He was a very open person. He could speak up his mind.”
Rishi Kapoor with Ranbir Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor. (Photo: Express Archives)
Ranbir, in a 2012 chat with the YouTube channel TBIP, recalled that his parents’ fights was covered in the press but at that time, the press didn’t bother him as much as he was more concerned about being in the “fire zone” with his parents. He also recalled that his parents would break things and he would sometimes hear their fights all night long.
“At that time, press didn’t matter because I was in the fire zone. I lived with my parents so seeing them going through that phase, I was very much part of it. I was right there. We live in a bungalow and my parents live downstairs and I live on the upper floor. I remember sitting on staircases for four hours from 1 am to 5 am and hearing them fight, break things.”
Ranbir said that his friends at school also knew about it, since it was being covered in the press, and he found it a little embarrassing. “Everyone goes through it but just that my parents were celebrities so it was in the press. It was a little embarrassing in school. Your friends don’t mention it because they are good friends, but somewhere you know that there is a sense of ‘I know what is happening in your life’. But you have to deal with it. What’s more important is that your parents became okay. They came out of this phase and find companionship and love and friendship again,” he said.
Rishi Kapoor passed away in 2020 after a long battle with cancer.
