The Show Goes On

Raj Kapoor was Hindi cinema’s quintessential showman. Several decades after his death,he will be occupy the centrestage in a museum dedicated to Hindi cinema,which is being built at his farmhouse in Loni,30 km from Pune. Set to be inaugurated later this year,the museum has 90 life-size statues of Hindi film actors,singers and

filmmakers from the 1940s through the ’70s who worked with Kapoor. The museum,called “The Golden Era of Indian Cinema: Raj Kapoor Memorial”,showcases the icons in their most memorable moments — Kapoor playing the accordion from Awara (1951),or a curvy Zeenat Aman from Satyam Shivam Sundaram.

The museum stands next to the 120-acre campus of Maharashtra Institute of Technology (the project is their initiative),which was built on the land once owned by the Kapoors. The Kapoor farmhouse — where many RK films were shot — stood untouched,till a team of 15 artists from Pune,Mumbai,Nashik,Hyderabad and Kolkata began converting it into a museum two-and-a-half years ago.