“I remember watching Bobby (1973) in the theatre. I’ve been Rishi Kapoor’s biggest fan,” says Chunky Panday as he walks down the memory lane. As the veteran actor breathed his last yesterday, Panday reminisces the time when he couldn’t share a single frame with him despite working in a film with him. He shares, “After I became an actor, I worked with him in Kasak (1992) where we didn’t have a single scene together. I was quite upset back then.”
Talking about the time when he closely worked with Kapoor during the shoot of Housefull 2 (2012), he nostalgically says, “Then I got a chance to work with him in Housefull 2. When we had the first screening of Housefull 2, I couldn’t make it because I was travelling. After the show, he called me and said to me, ‘You’re a fine actor!’ That coming from him was bigger than receiving any award.”
Panday says that Kapoor had a huge influence in his career. “I took on negative roles because I saw him as Rauf Lala in Agneepath (2012) and I was shaken up by that performance. The reason I did Saaho (2019) and Begum Jaan (2017) was because he inspired me to take that route. There’s going to be no one like him,” he says.
With a heavy heart, he says that his “biggest regret” would be to not have met the senior actor in the past couple of years. “The last time we worked together was when we went to Bengaluru for an event. Then he went to New York for his treatment. While I was there, I wanted to meet him. So, I called him up and I came to know that he was resting. I didn’t want to disturb. When he came back to India, I wanted to visit him but he went off to Delhi to resume shooting and got very busy. But I’ll cherish every moment that I spent with him,” he signs off.