Rishi Kapoor flashing his bare butt in the one of the scenes in Bobby (1973), was considered a bit too much for the 70s. In fact, the late actor’s co-star Aruna Irani, who was sharing the screen space with him in the shot, refused to do the sequence because she was feeling ‘shy’. It was Rishi’s father and the film’s director Raj Kapoor who convinced her to do it, telling her not to look at him directly. In an interview, Aruna also revealed that the Chandni actor confronted Irani about her refusal to do the shot with him later.
In an interview with Lehren Retro, Aruna revealed that she wasn’t convinced to do the scene earlier, but Raj Kapoor asked her to focus on the ‘right things’ instead. “I had said no initially. He comes out nude and dries out his hair with a towel. He gave that shot. I told Raj ji that I can’t do it. He said, ‘Dont look there na, don’t see wrong things, see right things’. I did it at last,” she said.
The veteran actor also recalled that Rishi Kapoor confronted her about her refusal later. “I was then working with Chintu ji in Ravi Malhotra’s film. He said, ‘Aruna ji, mujhe aapse ek baat poochni hai. You objected a lot in that scene, but nanga toh mujhe hona tha, aap kyun object karahe the (Arunaji, I have to ask you something. I was the one who was naked in the shot, why were you objecting)?’” she recalled.
However, after listening to his point of view, Aruna Irani felt that he was indeed right. “I told him that I was feeling shy. I was thinking and getting restless to ask you that why you were feeling shy when I was the one naked in that scene. But, he was actually right,” she ended.
Rishi Kapoor’s film Bobby was a teen romance of a rich boy and a poor girl which remains fresh for the later generations as well. It also featured Dimple Kapadia, Prem Chopra and Prem Nath. The romantic-musical drama was a major hit and the highest-grossing Indian film of 1973.
