Last week, when the country was discussing Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor’s wedding, a tweet about their families began doing the rounds. The tweet featured a detailed chart of the Kapoor family lineage, starting from Basheshwarnath Kapoor and branching out to Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor and their respective children. The extensive chart was made by Beth Watkins, who is based out of the United States’ Urbana-Champaign. She has a popular Bollywood blog and has been and she told News18 that it took collectively at least 20 hours spread across a few years to make.
“(It) probably took at least 20 hours at this point, but that is spread over a few years of bursts of work. I try to remember to add to it whenever I learn a new fact (about the family). Then last week when Alia and Ranbir got married, a friend on Twitter actually nudged me to update it,” she said.
ATTENTION: the Kapoor family tree has been updated. Permalink to a pdf: https://t.co/lsCZ6HuCNk pic.twitter.com/m6t8QaGhcB
— Beth Loves Bollywood (@bethlovesbolly) April 14, 2022
Beth, who works in the museum of world cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, began making the chart as a way of remembering the connections between Kapoor family members. Beth recalls reading Madhu Jain’s book, The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema, and noting pointers from it helped her understand the family and their connections better. As she dived deeper into the family, she discovered more and more connections, resulting in the comprehensive chart.
The Kapoor Tree drew massive attention from film lovers. Many Bollywood fan accounts on Twitter and Instagram shared the list and it also became a topic of discussion over phone calls for a few. However, the viral family tree chart also prompted a few to ask her if she has ‘too much time.’
Reacting to these comments, Beth said, “I think most of us are willing to devote lots of brainpower to things we’re interested in. I just choose to make this particular output public. Some people also question why it includes romantic relationships that never resulted in marriage. And to me, that’s obvious: Because this isn’t about genetic inheritance, it’s about connections and influence and power.”
Amid fan reactions, Beth hopes that at least one member of the Kapoor family gets to see the chart. “I hope someone does so that I can finally get an authoritative source on the relationship between the Prithviraj Kapoor group and the Surinder Kapoor group,” she said.
