Late actor Rishi Kapoor fought a long battle against cancer, which returned more intensely after initially abating. The actor passed away in 2020 during the first lockdown, and in a recent interview, his daughter Riddhima Kapoor spoke about his last days. Riddhima said that Rishi had such a lively personality that it was difficult for the family to come to terms with the fact that he was actually very ill. Speaking about his last days, Rishi’s son-in-law, Bharat Sahni, who was also a part of the interview, said, “The only thing he wanted to do was face the camera and make movies. Even when he was in the hospital in New York, the only thought he had was if I will be able to work again? Will people take me in heir movies? Will I be able to complete the movies that I have started?”
Riddhima recalled that during the shoot of his last film, Sharmaji Namkeen, Rishi was under medical supervision. And even though the family wanted him to take it easy, he was shooting all over Delhi and even enjoying street food. “We honestly didn’t want him to work at the time, we wanted him to rest. Delhi, at the time, the pollution was… it was not a safe environment for him. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was having street food also,” she told Galatta India.
Rishi first flew to New York in 2018 for treatment. In 2019, he came back to India, and was seemingly doing much better but the cancer returned aggressively. “It came back. It came back very quickly, it was very aggressive. We did spend Diwali together, we went out. He was very excited,” she shared, and added, “He was so happy, attended all the Diwali parties, we spent Diwali together and next thing, in a few months, he is back in the hospital.”
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Riddhima said that it was the “worst phase” for the family and recalled how people trolled them for not looking upset. “A lot of people said that they don’t look like they are very upset but they don’t know what we went through at the time,” she said.
When Rishi Kapoor passed away, Riddhima was in Delhi and couldn’t be with him in his last moments. Since the lockdown was in place, she had to seek special permission to travel by road and could only reach Mumbai after his last rites. “It was horrible. Because my brother and mother broke the news to me on FaceTime. Calling me up at 7:30-8 in the morning… telling me that this has happened,” she recalled.
Riddhima shared her last memory of her father and said that he called her two days before he passed away but she couldn’t take the call, and she still regrets it. “He tried to call me two days before this happened. He gave me a missed call, I still have it on my phone. That was his last missed call to me and I thought… I wish I had taken that,” she recalled, and said that even though she called him back, he couldn’t speak much. “After that, he couldn’t really respond or talk because he was in the hospital and I still have that missed call saved. I took a screenshot and I saved it. Because that was the last time he called me to actually talk to me. I called him after that but he couldn’t speak,” she said.
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