Rishi Kapoor

• Rishi Kapoor & Neetu Kapoor first met on the sets of Zahreela Insaan (1974).
• They dated for a while before marrying on January 22, 1980.
• Rishi revealed in his book that he was scared of letting his parents know he was dating someone.

On the sets of Zahreela Insaan, Rishi and Neetu Kapoor initially ran across each other (1974). They were well-known together and appeared in movies like Kabhi Kabhi (1976) and Doosra Aadmi (1976). Before being married on January 22, 1980, they dated for a while. In his 2017 book, the late veteran actor related a story of how his older sister Ritu Nanda introduced Neetu to the family and arranged for their engagement. In his autobiography, Rishi admitted that he was apprehensive about telling his parents, the filmmaker Raj Kapoor and his wife Krishna Raj, that he was ever seeing anyone.

He didn’t have to, due to his sister. She planned things in such a way that Rishi Kapoor was taken aback by his own engagement. Rishi revealed in his memoirs that he was unable to tell his parents that he wanted to marry Neetu. He stated, “In retrospect, I wonder if I should have sought treatment from a psychiatrist to work through my feelings. I frequently think that if it hadn’t been for my sister Ritu, I would never have married Neetu, or we would have married much later. I might not have carried our connection to the next level if I had been left to my own devices.”

On the day of his wedding, the actor revealed that he went to Delhi to attend a function for his sister’s family and returned engaged. He remembered reading in the book Khullam Khulla: Rishi Kapoor is an actor. Uncensored, “I had no idea Ritu was plotting and planning with my pals Gogi (filmmaker Ramesh Behl) and Ravi Malhotra (father of Karan Malhotra, the young director of Karan Johar’s 2012 film Agneepath). As I waited to board my aircraft in Mumbai, I ran into Saira Banu and Dilip Kumar, who asked me where I was heading. When I informed him I was going to Delhi for a business meeting, he was surprised.’Don’t pull a fast on me,’ Dilip sa’ab laughed. ‘Aren’t you heading there to get married?’ How prescient Dilip saab’s words proved to be.”

Ritu had also invited Neetu and her mother to an engagement party. Rishi’s family took matters into their own hands, escorting him and Neetu to the mandap and arranging for the exchanging of rings. But because everything was so last-minute, the ring Rishi was wearing with a ‘R’ on it actually belonged to Ravi. Furthermore, he didn’t have to be concerned because his father welcomed Neetu into the family on the same day.

The couple had two children, daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni and son Ranbir Kapoor, who followed in his parents’ footsteps. Rishi was diagnosed with leukemia in 2018 and later relocated to New York City for treatment. He died on April 30, 2020. Neetu made a comeback in films after his death with JugJugg Jeeyo (2022)

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