The boys loved him because he represented a new persona distinct from the holy trinity of Dilip-Raj-Dev.
In him, the young and restless westernized urban youth of the 1960s found their poster boy. But to that, Kapoor brought an abandon, a wild pleasure that was purely his own. His dancing had the body-jerking shake-and-rattle of Elvis. He was the stylish club singer in Dil Deke Dekho, the drummer in Teesri Manzil and he was unapologetically well-heeled (Junglee, Jaanwar, Kashmir Ki Kali). This hero was zestful and angst-free, more at home crooning in nightclubs than tilling paddy fields. 'Yahoo,' the primate-like scream emitted exactly 50 years ago in Junglee (1961), created a new modern hero someone free from the hangover of a colonial past and without any trace of Nehruvian socialism. MUMBAI: Shammi Kapoor, who changed the template of the Hindi film hero, passed away at Mumbai's Breach Candy hospital on Sunday.
