New Delhi, May 1 -- Sometimes you think you know all about the stars. Simply because you have seen them larger than life onscreen while growing up. Simply because you have read so much about them. In the end, you have formed a picture of them in your minds, just like the cinema projector, and have convinced yourself that is as good as it gets. Till you meet them in person. And they leave you with a stray memory of their inner selves. Rishi Kapoor was one such and more. He would lay his heart bare.

Many years ago, when he was on the cusp of his second coming as an actor rather than the star by playing the brutally cold villain Rauf Lala in Agneepath, I had met him at home. He was old world that way, relying on his secretary to find a time...