During the shooting of Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Raj Kapoor started calling brother Shashi Kapoor taxi for doing multiple films at a time.
Shashi Kapoor, who breathed his last today in Mumbai, was known as an actor with the cutest smile in Hindi film industry. He came from a family that dominated Hindi film making since 1950s. During 1970s, Shashi Kapoor was at the pinnacle of his popularity.
It was the time when Raj Kapoor planned one of his iconic and most talked about films, Satyam Shivam Sundaram that explored the distinction between physical love and spiritual love. In Raj Kapoor Speaks, his daughter Ritu Nanda says that Lata Mangeshkar was the inspiration behind Satyam Shivam Sundaram, released in 1978.
Raj Kapoor was convinced that the male protagonist of the film, Rajeev can only be played by Shashi Kapoor, thought to be the prettiest face in the Bollywood then. The story was about a man falling in love a woman with silken voice but disfigured face.
During those days, Shashi Kapoor was sought after by all the top directors and he had already committed dates to four or five filmmakers. But, Raj Kapoor wanted dates in bunch and that too, with a rider that the day when Shashi Kapoor shot for Satyam Shivam Sundaram, he would not shoot for any other film.
This was one condition of his elder brother that Shashi Kapoor was not in position to honour. In an interview later, Shashi Kapoor would tell that to accommodate Raj Kapoor, he had to work round the clock. Shashi Kapoor would do four to five shifts a day and sleep in a car - his own or taxi that he hired.
To Raj Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor always looked like "running away in taxi" and he gave him this nickname, more out of frustration at not having enough time of the younger brother on his film. Raj Kapoor called not only Shashi Kapoor but many others actor-stars taxi.
Raj Kapoor would tell Shashi Kapoor: "You people aren't artists. You are all taxis. Someone puts your meter down, you go there. Then someone else puts your meter down and you go there."
But, this moniker stayed with Shashi Kapoor for another reason. He was known to pick up or drop any of the co-actors in his car or taxi as shuttled between places and shifts for shooting for his films.
