Late actor Rishi Kapoor in his autobiography Khullam Khulla had revealed that it was his sister Ritu Nanda that he was able to marry Neetu Kapoor. Rishi Kapoor and Neetu fell in love during the production of their film Kabhi Kabhie in 1976. Despite being committed to Neetu, the actor was unsure of asking her to marry. In the biography, which was co-written by Meena Iyer, Rishi Kapoor opened up that he might have never married Neetu if his sister Ritu had not planned his engagement in Delhi, without his knowledge.
Apart from Ritu, Rishi Kapoor had three other siblings, Randhir Kapoor, Rajiv Kapoor and Rima Jain. Rishi Kapoor married Neetu on January 22, 1980. Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor’s two children are businesswoman Riddhima Kapoor Sahni and actor Ranbir Kapoor.
In his biography, as reported by The Indian Express, Rishi Kapoor had shared that given how committed he and Neetu were, nobody could fathom why he wasn’t popping the question. “How could they know that I was battling a million demons in my head?,” he said. Rishi Kapoor was worried that post-marriage, her acting career might go for a toss. He had serious misgivings about the effect of marriage on an actor’s longevity, considering how Rajesh Khanna’s career went on a downward spiral post marriage. The actor was scared that Khanna’s story might get repeated with him since he was also a romantic hero and was marrying an actress. Rishi Kapoor further stated that he thought that he might never have married Neetu, or they would have gotten married much later than they did if it weren’t for his sister Ritu. “Left to myself, I may never have taken our relationship to the next level,” he wrote.
The late actor had shared that he was heading to Delhi to attend his sister’s engagement, but he never thought he would come back with a ring on his own finger. He recalled that at the airport in Mumbai, as he waited to board his flight, the actor ran into Saira Banu and Dilip Kumar, who asked him where he was headed. When Rishi Kapoor told him that he was going to Delhi to attend an engagement, Dilip saab joked, ‘Don’t pull a fast one on me. Aren’t you going there to get engaged yourself?”
On April 30, 2020, Rishi Kapoor breathed his last, following a battle with leukaemia and treatment in New York.
