Raj Kapoor was one of the most respected filmmakers in the country when his son Randhir Kapoor married actor Babita. Raj had encouraged Randhir to get married to Babita in 1971, and when the two welcomed their first daughter Karisma in 1974, the whole family was by their side. Everybody, but Raj. Babita, who separated from Randhir a few years after their marriage, and raised her two daughters Karisma and Kareena on her own, previously shared how things unfolded on the day Karisma was born. She also revealed Raj’s condition to visit the baby in the hospital. Karisma was Raj’s first grandchild.
In the book Raj Kapoor: The One and Only Showman, written by his daughter Ritu Nanda, Babita shared that her father Hari Shivdasani and Raj would play tennis when she was a child. She recalled that Raj would often visit their house after tennis and she would share her ambition of becoming a star with him. “I remember as a child I would sit on his lap, and he would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I would say that I wanted to be an actor and he would always encourage me and say one day I would surely be a big star,” she recalled.
Babita said that her daughter Karisma, who is fondly called Lolo by her family members, would also ask the same question to her grandfather Raj. “It is strange but Lolo (Karisma) also would be asked the same question by her grandfather! Lolo also used to say that I want to be an actor and he would say the same line that one day you will be a big star,” she said. Babita then recalled the day when Karisma was born in 1974.
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“I remember the day Lolo was born, the entire family was with me by my side at Breach Candy Hospital, except my father-in-law. He said that he would come to the hospital only if the newborn had blue eyes. Thank the lord that Lolo had deep blue eyes, like my father-in-law,” she said.
In the same book, Karisma also recalls talking about her acting ambitions to her grandfather. “As a teenager, I always said I want to work in movies, I wanted to be an actor. I remember my grandfather telling me, ‘To be an actor is not a bed of roses! If you want to be an actor, walk on the thorns and work on the soil to make the roses grow and then become an actor. You have to aim to always be the best. You should always have that ambition to be an achiever’,” she recalled.
Raj Kapoor passed away in 1988 at 63. Karisma made her debut in the movies in 1991 when she was just 17.
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