08 July,2023 09:02 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Shahid Kapoor (L); Pankaj Kapur in a still from Karamchand (R)
Shahid Kapoor was born with acting and dancing in his DNA. His father Pankaj Kapur is an accomplished actor, while mother Neelima Azeem has been a respected dancer for several years, occasionally also dabbling in acting. While Pankaj Kapur has several critically acclaimed films to his credit, in the 1980s, he became a household name through the TV series Karamchand, a comedy television series in the detective genre. Post that, his other show, Office Office, a comic satire on prevalent corruption in India, became a huge hit, too.
Talking to Mid-day's Mayank Shekhar during the latest episode of Sit With Hitlist, Shahid spoke about the popularity his father gained through television back then. "I think that was the golden era for television where some great stuff was happening I think the penetration of the platform was huge!"
As an example of the popularity of Karamchand, Shahid narrated an incident that happened in Delhi when he was a kid. The actor grew up with his mom in Delhi for the first 10 years of his life. "My dad came to Delhi and Karamchand had come out. I was a kid... I don't even remember how much of it I watched because I was busy playing cricket and chilling with friends... I was quite young. He took me out to Nirulas in Delhi. We were eating some nice food. Suddenly people start crowding around him and then one by one people started bringing gajars... I have this memory, like a wide angle shot of lots of people with gajar saying 'Yeh aap hamare haath se kha lijiye.'"
"My dad is a very reserved person, he is a damn serious actor even when he is doing comedy, he takes it very seriously. He said, 'Yeh kya kar rahe hai aap. Main apne beta ke saath pizza kha raha hoon.' We had to run away from there. He held my hand and he said, 'Beta, let's run', because there were 30 people with gajars. They wanted to feed my dad gajar because he used to have that gajar (on the show)," Shahid added.
Watch the full interview on Mid-day's YouTube channel.
