An ex-techie is making waves in Samantha Ruth Prabhu's life. Director Raj Nidimoru's education qualifications and career
Stepping Into Togetherness?
Public Sightings Strengthen Buzz
Past Relationships and Fresh Starts
Who Exactly Is Raj Nidimoru?
What Lies Ahead?
Is love in the air for Samantha Ruth Prabhu ? The 'Yeh Maaya Chesave' star Samantha Ruth Prabhu? Rumours of a romance with her ' Citadel: Honey Bunny ' director Raj Nidimoru have been around for some time now. However, the diva recently added fuel to the fire by sharing a cosy picture of them posing in an airplane.According to an exclusive report from Pinkvilla, the duo may be contemplating a big step forward in their relationship. An insider close to the situation disclosed that the pair is seriously considering cohabiting. 'Samantha and Raj are currently searching for a home they can share. It's more than just an idea—they're already moving in that direction emotionally and practically,' the source stated. Raj Nidimoru, who ended his marriage with former wife Shyyamali in 2022, is believed to have found a fresh start and renewed affection while collaborating with Samantha on Citadel.To clear the air around certain circulating rumors, the source further added, 'There's been confusion about Raj being seen with a young girl, but the child is not his daughter. In fact, Raj doesn't have a daughter—the girl spotted with him is the daughter of his creative partner, Krishna DK.'Fueling the gossip even more, Samantha and Raj were recently seen attending a pickleball event together. Samantha, who co-owns the Chennai Super Champs pickleball team, was not only cheering from the sidelines but was also seen hand-in-hand with Raj. This public display of affection only added momentum to ongoing reports about their closeness, as fans and onlookers couldn't help but notice their chemistry.Both Samantha and Raj come into this connection with past relationships that ended in the public eye. Samantha was previously married to actor Naga Chaitanya. The couple tied the knot in 2017 but officially ended their union in 2021 after four years. While both remained private about the reasons behind their split, the announcement took fans by surprise. On the other hand, Raj's divorce from Shyyamali in 2022 remained low-key but marked the end of another long-standing bond.Raj Nidimoru forms one half of the celebrated filmmaking duo, Raj & DK, known for their unique storytelling and quirky narratives. They rose to prominence with the hit horror-comedy Stree and cemented their reputation with streaming successes like The Family Man and Farzi. Both originally hail from Andhra Pradesh—Raj from Tirupati and DK from Chittoor. Their journey began during their time at SVU College of Engineering, where friendship and shared ambition laid the foundation for a dynamic creative partnership. Before venturing into the world of cinema, the two had careers in software engineering in the United States. They made their directorial debut with the 2009 crime comedy 99.Raj recently co-directed Citadel: Honey Bunny, which starred Samantha in a thrilling spy role. While the show received initial buzz, its second season has unexpectedly been put on hold. As for Samantha and Raj's personal equation, only time will tell if this companionship will grow into something lasting—or remain a beautiful chapter in their ongoing stories.
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The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Raj Kapoor's Cinema: Between Innocence and Naivete
Published : Jun 11, 2025 08:04 IST - 13 MINS READ Ranbir Raj arrives in 1950s Bombay on foot. A babe in the woods, he carries little except his BA certificate and a gold medal he received for imandari (integrity). Wide-eyed, he stands under a Coca-Cola billboard, cocooned in an English suit unwashed from his weary journey, Japanese shoes scrubbed out, thread loosened by the barely paved roads, a Russian hat, an Indian heart. To make ends meet, our man of globalised surface and localised heart pawns this medal of imandari, but Shree 420 (1955), a film which paints in bold and bald allusive strokes, nudges at his integrity being on sale, too. Will the innocent man, played by Raj Kapoor—a sharp nod to Charlie Chaplin's tramp, his derby hat, toothbrush moustache, and rickety joints—hack it in the ruthless city? Will the city change him? Or, as Kapoor and the writer K.A. Abbas provoke with Nehruvian idealism, will he change the city? Loss of joy These questions haunt the opening stretches ofShree 420, Kapoor's fourth and most emotionally pointed film as director, exemplifying best an idea that he keeps toying around with—innocence, as in the sense of wonder that lets you run amok, feeling safe, but also in the sense of being without blame, sans harm, what the poet Carl Phillips conceives as 'innocence—of disappointment, still/clean'. Raj meets Vidya (Nargis), a poor schoolteacher with enamel-hard morals, and immediately falls in love. He meets Maya (Nadira), a rich lady with an eye for spoils, and immediately trips into vice. Creeping up the ladder of easy comforts and loose morals, Raj loses sight of himself. At one point, dressed in a spiffy suit, he looks into a mirror and sees his older tramp self, smoked in dirt, smiling. Innocence and joy might be quenched in the same watering hole. Having swapped the messy and communal dance among the homeless for the sterile ball dance of the moneyed, this loss of innocence that Raj suffers is framed as a loss of joy. Also Read | The showman who accidentally documented India's soul The allusive burden of a man stuck between Vidya or 'knowledge' and Maya or 'illusion' keeps the film's tightly wound strings plucked. Raj's climactic return to himself—that worn out coat, shoes, hat—is a return to innocence, choosing Vidya, picking knowledge. Dialogues are written such that you could be speaking about Vidya the person and vidya the ideal; imaan the physical object and its representation as one thing—the material and the ideal pooling their wares together. This triumphant cinema lays its subtext so textually that it sheds that subtextual quality entirely. Similarly, Kapoor's last film, Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), follows Ganga as she makes her way from the Gangotri glacier to get maili (sullied) as she reaches the plains—I speak of Ganga the character played by Mandakini in the same breath as I imagine the river, dredged up in the cities' excretions. The innocence in Shree 420, though, goes against the grain of how most people conceive of the word—this is a knowing innocence. In Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music, Amit Chaudhuri recollects an argument he had with an older man regarding William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Chaudhuri was fired by the engines of intuition even if it burnt his arguments. The youth regenerates. He was convinced that despite coming chronologically first, the songs of innocence were written after the songs of experience. Factually, this is not true. Chaudhuri knows this, but he persists with this hunch. In that throwaway philosophical naivete, he wonders, 'You only arrive at the simplicity and calm of innocence after experience, not before it'; that innocence is borne out of experience, and does not precede it. A framework that flips life on its head, it asks us to look at Raj's innocence not as someone who is yet to be blemished by the world, who needs to be protected, but as someone, who having experienced the world's blemishing, emerged unstained. His innocence is not a beginning, but an end, whose mettle has been fired at in the kilns, and tested. Anti-capitalist innocence At the outset of Shree 420, when trying to take a lift from a rich merchant, Raj pretends to have fainted, and when caught and chastised, he notes, 'Jhoot bolne se hi to badhiya car mein baithne ko milta hai' (It is only by telling lies that I get to sit inside such a luxurious car). This is not naivete. He knows the world's ways. The film insists here that his garrulous, quick-witted mouth and lovesick, wide-open eyes have not been airdropped into this world. He has lived before. He knows. He does not have to discover the world is evil and retreat. His discovery in the big city, Bombay, is how easy it is to get caught in the world's evil, to then learn the lesson and retreat from its talon-grip. I say 'retreat', but this return to innocence is not a monastic vision of retreating from the world. Progressive journalist, screenwriter, and outspoken communist K.A. Abbas, who frequently collaborated with Kapoor, writes: 'In my mind Raj Kapoor is like an engine, and I felt that if this engine could be connected to the right vehicle, it would spread my views far and wide.' These views were not of renunciation but of a socialist state. At the end of Shree 420, having realised how easy it is to get tainted by the city, Raj hits the road, dressed again as the tramp. But Vidya calls him, and drags him back to the city, and shows him what he made of it—having mobilised the public, the city is now bursting with public housing for the homeless. Against this background, their silhouettes glow. It is not a retreat from the ruthless city, but a return to a transformed, once-ruthless city. Yes, Raj had an arc. So does Bombay. This innocence is also anti-capitalist—for often in Kapoor's films the conflation of material impoverishment with moral virtue rears its head. To be rich is to optimise, and the moment you optimise for anything in life, you have lost joy, lost innocence. Nehruvian ideals Take John chacha in Boot Polish (1954), a film that Kapoor allegedly took creative control over—a bootlegger with a heart of gold who, by taking the two orphans under his wing, becomes a paragon of Kapoor's innocence. He teaches the kids the importance of respectability in one's job. 'Bheek mat do. Kaam do' (Don't give alms, give jobs) he tells the people dripped in gold who are donating money to the poor. He advises the two children to not beg, to find other means. As someone who is himself in a disreputable line of work, with constant anxiety about a police arrest, he knows what respectability brings to the table. But what the character also makes clear is the distinction between goodness and respectability. By all means a good human being performing disreputable labour, John chacha exemplifies Nehruvian India's desire for respect as one separate from goodness. In a world that constantly demands your humiliation, as Awara (1951) makes clear, hold on to what is good in you. The innocent character, then, is one who values goodness over respectability, even if he never gives up on the dreams of respectable labour. It is why Awara's Raju, a vagabond and small-time thief, registers as innocent, even as he slashes pockets with the grin of a slippery kid, and eventually murders thugs and assaults his high-strung father who left his mother out to dry. His innocence is a moral but not a legal victory in the film, which begins and ends as a court drama. Spared from being executed, he is jailed for three years. But that is not the film's justice—the justice is Raju's release and his union with his lover, Rita. That is his arc. The loss of innocence is when a character allows this desire for respectability—which could mean money and power—to eclipse the moral demands made from the character—to be kind, helpful, and in a world where spreading joy is a virtue. The provocation of Kapoor's films is that sometimes the two desires might be opposed to each other. You cannot be both respectable and innocent. 'The innocent character, then, is one who values goodness over respectability, even if he never gives up on the dreams of respectable labour.' In Kapoor's cinema, bad actions are profit-mongering ones, evil tied to fortune. Bad actions done by the poor—such as thieving—are so deeply contextualised that they shed their 'badness'. There is something morally compromised at worst and joyless at best about being moneyed: the lawyer in Awara eating dinner on the lonesome long table; the businesspeople in Shree 420 partying and swindling each other; the politician and industrialist in Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985) trying to make a quick buck off the river's pollution, but also, literally, sullying Ganga the character by holding her hostage to their carnal desire; and the land-owning thakur in Prem Rog (1982). The innocent figure, thus, works as a foil to the respectable or the ambitious one who never looks back and is in constant pursuit—fragile and wiry. 'Mudh mudh ke na dekh' (Don't look back), Maya sings to Raj. You can faintly hear Kapoor's cinema whisper in your ears: can you be both ambitious and innocent? Can you optimise for profits and love? In 1948, at the spindly age of 24, Raj Kapoor not only began his own banner, RK Films, but also made his directorial debut, Aag. At that time he was known as 'Raju' the hustler about town or 'the elder son of Prithviraj' the towering theatre personality of Mumbai. The arc of Kapoor's five-decade career, his becoming the Showman of Hindi Cinema, was an act of retrieving himself from his father's shadow, a theme that keeps rising in his films until youth itself becomes synonymous with the shrugging off of received legacy. In Aag, Kewal (Raj Kapoor) leaves his family tradition of lawyers, to become a stage actor. In Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), his last film, Naren (Rajiv Kapoor, Raj Kapoor's youngest son) leaves his industrialist father to go 'kahin door', somewhere far off, by the banks of the Ganga, with his lover and their child. Here, I must caution a difference between innocence and naivete. If to be innocent is to be unblemished by the world, to be naive is to not know blemish, to be ignorant of it. The broad arc in Raj Kapoor's cinema can be seen as the movement from the innocent male to the naive one. This might be because as Kapoor's filmography ages, his actors—his sons Rishi Kapoor and Rajiv Kapoor, and his brother Shashi Kapoor—look embryonic, smooth-skinned, wide-eyed, without facial hair. The first time they see a beautiful woman in the film feels like the first time they have ever seen beauty. The first time they hear a beautiful song, their response is pronounced with heightened, dopey feeling, as though they have discovered melody. The face of Raj Kapoor, after all, looked touched by life—he had a moustache. These faces look touched up, air-dropped. But I also suspect this male naivete has a lot to do with how desire was shown in these later movies, whispers from Mera Naam Joker (1970) and Bobby (1973), expressing itself most egregiously in his final three films, Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), Prem Rog (1982), and Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), where women withered as suffering symbols of sexed tradition, who yearn to be cast out and punished, losing their sense of self at the feet of their lover. In the 1950s, working exclusively with Nargis, the imagery of women in Kapoor's films was saree-clad virtue. Whether they were poor in Shree 420 or rich in Awara, there was no scope for moral dithering or erotic fixation. Even when Nargis wore a swimsuit in Awara—shot indoors in a set constructed on Nargis' demand, for she refused to be outdoors in a swimsuit—Rachel Dwyer notes, 'the close up [is] of her face with her hair blowing in the wind, not one of her body.' Enter voyeurism But soon, with Nargis' exit from Kapoor's oeuvre, a voyeurism enters Kapoor's cinema. Although Vyjayantimala's scene in a swimsuit in Sangam (1964) only came after much cajoling, Kapoor seems disturbingly fixated on the idea of the exposed female body. In Bobby and Mera Naam Joker, these were used to fuel the men's first brush of desire—'pandrah-solah baras vala pyaar', the love of an adolescent, basically a hormonal surge. But from Mera Naam Joker onwards, these sexualised female bodies performed by freshly minted actresses could not muster what Michael Newton calls Nargis' 'spontaneity of feeling'. And a stilted, staged, sexed presence begins to permeate these films. The women became forcefully buxom, and the chemistry between the lovers refuses to see it as erotic, only romantic. If only the writing were as frank as the wardrobe. Why is there this chasm between what we are seeing and what we are hearing? Raj Kapoor still wanted to hold onto the mantle of tradition even as he called himself a 'bosom man' in a conversation with the writer Khushwant Singh. The woman became the site of pavitrata (purity) for the people on screen and the object of lust for us off-screen—he wanted it both ways. What is this purity he is after, an idea that is itself tainted by generations of de-sexualising women? Besides, these women do not seem aware of themselves as sexualised objects, for there is an abandon that comes with self-knowledge that these women lack. The erotics is for us, the audience, to salivate over. Also Read | Awara and the Constitutional question When Zeenat Aman writes about the furore around Satyam Shivam Sundaram where she walks about wrapped in a white cloth or in tight low-cut blouses—'I was always quite amused by the accusations of obscenity as I did not and do not find anything obscene about the human body'—she is responding to the image in isolation. The human body is a site of desire. But when it is hollowed solely into a site of desire, that is uncomfortable to watch, like watching a shapely mannequin being eroticised. How do you respond to these women, over-sexed traditionalists who will caress the shivling with their face in an act of devotion, come to pujas in bursting blouses, shower under waterfalls in white wraparounds, are constantly burned, assaulted, raped, thrown into brothels? It turns the men into saviours who turn their backs on their families and their future to hold on to love as a sacred solution to all of society's ills. The male actor, then, has to be turned into a naive lover, unaware of how these sexed bodies are being looked at, unaware of how it will be made maili or sullied by the world. If they respond to the erotic body erotically, it might come off as sleazy. A man cannot say to a woman, I want to have sex with you. He has to talk about her 'tan ki sundarta', the body's beauty. In some ways, words construct meaning. But elsewhere, they seem to leach meaning. The more they say the less they mean, these joyless puppets in the fag end of Kapoor's cinema that once showed us what innocence looked like. Prathyush Parasuraman is a writer and critic who writes across publications, both print and online.
Pink Villa
2 hours ago
- Pink Villa
Want Kareena Kapoor's figure? Her trainer reveals 3 game-changing fitness tips
Kareena Kapoor Khan is one actress who has shown us both sides of the coin when it comes to her figure. From size zero to gaining that pregnancy weight, she has embraced all the changes confidently and never fails to motivate her followers to stay fit. For her, it's not about being skinny but about working on that strength, reveals her trainer, Mahesh Ghanekar. If you want to be like Bebo, then here are 4 tips shared by her trainer that you need to start right now. 1. Talking to HT, Mahesh Ghanekar revealed that Kareena Kapoor first focused on building her consistency and then shifted to weight training. She trains at least 4 times a week. 2. Kareena always trains for an hour or sometimes more and does 14-15 variations per session. 'It is all high-intensity interval training (HIIT), but she is fully present and ready to take on any challenge. That's what makes it fun,' revealed Ghanekar. 3. The key to Jab We Met actress' weight loss has been a combination of weight training, intermittent fasting and a healthy diet. Her weight has dropped from 67.5 to 64 kgs, and they are targeting another 2-3 kgs in the coming days. Her instructor further revealed that weight training has been working really well for her, and her strength is growing. Now you guys know what it takes to look like Kareena Kapoor Khan. The actress recently turned heads in a yellow kaftan dress she wore to Sonam Kapoor's birthday bash. She arrived with hubby Saif Ali Khan and looked stunning. Talking about Kareena Kapoor's work front, she was last seen in Rohit Shetty's Singham Again, starring Ajay Devgn, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor and more. Now, she is all set to collaborate with Prithviraj Sukumaran and Meghna Gulzar for Daayra. On April 14, the actress shared a couple of pictures with director Meghna Gulzar and actor Prithviraj Sukumaran to confirm the same, and we bet fans are too excited to see their collaboration on the silver screen. Stay tuned to Pinkvilla for more such updates!
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
Karan Johar calls out Bollywood's 'herd mentality'; Criticises trend of copying hits: 'You see 'Chhaava' working...'
Filmmaker Karan Johar has shared his honest thoughts about what's going wrong in Bollywood right now. The 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' director said that the biggest issue troubling the film industry today is the 'herd mentality'. He explained how too many filmmakers are trying to copy what's already worked instead of coming up with fresh and original ideas. 'Everybody wants to do what others are doing' While speaking to Bollywood Hungama, KJo pointed out that many in the industry are trying to repeat the success of hit films instead of focusing on new stories. He said, 'I think it is everybody grappling to do what others are doing. We see 'Pushpa' running and catering so strongly to the tier-2 and tier-3 audiences, suddenly, we will see 20 others wanting to do the same. You see 'Chhaava' working, everybody would want to make historicals. 'Stree' and everybody wants to make horror comedies. Those worked because they were individually strong, and there was no other option in that genre. It was a unique thought that made those films work.' The 'Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham' director believes that the reason films like 'Stree' and 'Pushpa' did well is because they were different and strong in their own way. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Düsseldorf: Gutes Hören sucht 700 Testhörer für Hörgeräte ohne Zuzahlung Gutes Hören Undo Just copying those genres will not give the same results, he said. 'We need unique ideas' Karan also spoke about how important it is for filmmakers to trust their own thoughts and ideas rather than follow others. He shared how someone once asked him if he had his own film universe, like a spy or cop universe. The 'My Name is Khan' director further explained, 'We all need to have individual thoughts that are unique to ourselves. Someone asked me the other day, 'Do you have a universe?' I was like, 'As in?' They were like, 'A spy universe or a cop universe.' I was like, 'My universe is cinema itself.' I am not here to build universes, I am here to tell stories. In that story if there's a universe, then why not?' Karan made it clear that he is more interested in telling good stories rather than trying to build a big film universe just to fit in. Cannes appearance for 'Homebound' Apart from sharing his thoughts on the state of Bollywood, Karan recently made headlines for his appearance at the Cannes Film Festival. He attended the premiere of his film 'Homebound', which is backed by his production house. 'Homebound' is directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and stars Ishaan Khatter , Vishal Jethwa , and Janhvi Kapoor . Kareena Kapoor & Karan Johar Recreate Iconic 'Poo' Moment at Sonam Kapoor's Birthday | Fans Go Wild
