September was a month Rishi Kapoor loved just a little more than other months, and while his own birthday — September 4 — was probably part of why, it was September 28 that he often remarked on as being one of the most special days in his life.

Not surprising, when one dives into the details. It was, of course, the day his son Ranbir Kapoor — worthy successor to the original "chocolate boy" legend of his father — was born. It was also however the date his first film, a landmark in Indian filmdom, Bobby, was released in 1973. It was also, coincidentally, the birthday of his sister Rima Jain, and of another figure he deeply adored and admired, Lata Mangeshkar.

September 2021 should have marked Rishi's 70th birthday but he succumbed to cancer in 2020, leaving an entire generation with the void of a superstar who came to define an entire genre of 70s filmmaking.

With a career spanning over 100 romantic movies, he at once continued a legacy but also came to mark a pivotal moment of transition in the history of the Kapoor clan, he acknowledged in a fascinating interview with Tarun Tejpal in 2013 — the year which, coincidentally, marked 100 years of Indian cinema. "The Kapoor contribution to the first 100 years of Indian cinema is 84 years," he proudly recounted to Tarun Tejpal.

For his father's generation, he noted, there were so many issues, so many social fractures, so many complex changes to reckon with that the actors of the time found themselves immersed in work that had a serious, substantial, deep social impact. Things changed in the 70s. "By the time I was acting, I and other actors like me were often working on four or five films at the same time that all were basically lost-and-found stories! A child or two children are lost in the beginning, meet at the end, and the film is everything that happens in between," he laughed to Tarun J Tejpal.

This could have been make or break in the Kapoor clan's continued presence and dominance of the film industry but Rishi found a way to make the genre his own, infusing his sparkle, joie d'vivre and infectious energy into even the most formulaic of projects and winning the adoration of millions in the process.

That he was never conflicted about wanting to be an actor is evident from an anecdote he narrated to Tarun Tejpal in the same interview. While his first adult role in the movies was in Bobby, it was in Shree 420 that he first made a fleeting appearance as a toddler, in the seminal song Pyaar Hua Iqrar Hua. One night at the dinner table, his father Raj Kapoor asked his mother Krishna whether he should cast their son Chintu in the movie as the baby joker. So elated was he at these words, but unwilling to risk revealing his joy in case something foiled the plans, he showed no reaction but went to his room straight after dinner, sat at his table, pulled out a sheet of paper — and started practising his autograph.

It's the kind of anecdote that both warms the heart but also reflects the rare authenticity that he brought to the screen in his acting career — you could see his spirit shine through his work, a radiant, unselfconscious joy at doing the only thing he had clearly ever wanted to do.

Speaking of being part of an inheritance as extraordinary as the Kapoors, Ranbir spoke of the paradox that to do justice to a legacy you had to disregard it. "Only your own intelligence and your own work can take you forward, their accomplishments won't," he astutely pointed out. And in a metaphor that showed that while he was deferential and respectful to his father sitting alongside him onstage, he had a cheeky, sharp mind of his own, he remarked on the fact that in fact there's a lot similar between the different generations of Kapoor men. "Fundamentally we're all similar, we're just different generations of the same product. If I could make a silly comparison, we're like the Apple iPhone. My grandfather was generation one, my father was the second generation, Karisma here is the third and I'm the fourth. We're the same, only maybe (like the phone) just getting slimmer in every generation, that's all."

Unquestionably, he has his father's smart, sassy genes, and we can see just why Rishi counted the date of his son's birth as the highlight of the annual calendar!