It's easy to be obsessed with Raj Kapoor's films. They are all about opulent havelis, beautiful women, social dilemmas, grandeur and pure, unadulterated, unabashed mainstream glory. All splashed with extravagance, and all soul, social issues glossed with the brush of commercial cinema made with pure instinct. Shree 420 and Awaara understood the common man's persecution and brought to life our Chaplinesque equation. When his women became strong protagonists as in Sangam, Prem Rog, Satyam Shivam Sundaram and Ram Teri Ganga Maili, their soul was all there. His strong female characters were also loving. Certainly, there was a tilt towards the turnstiles but every viewer got his soul's worth.

It's easy to be obsessed with Raj Kapoor.

Kidar Sharma described him as "the cave man conception of love." Mahesh Bhatt said: "An audacious filmmaker who displayed the feverish carnality of a schoolboy." My first memory of Raj Kapoor was when I saw a poor copy of Bobby on my newly acquired video. The neighbours had all gathered to watch it. I was of course more interested in watching "Aunty Dimple" who was a friend of the family. By the end of it, I was ready to drop the "Aunty". I realise now the impact he had even on an eight-year-old. The impact of a first-love hook crossed age barriers. His themes were regressive but a film like Bobby or Sangam is timeless. Sangam is the mother of all triangles and all love stories finally go back to Bobby.

Prem Rog is my all time favourite. I don't think people realise how much of Prem Rog there is in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Kajol, a child-woman becoming a woman was like Padmini Kohlapure in Prem Rog. Shah Rukh Khan had that element -- he doesn't realise he loves Kajol. And the first dialogue in my film, "Aye Rahul, mujhse dosti karoge (Will you be my friend)?" is a Bobby line. Today's generation thinks it's a KKHH line but it is my tribute to Raj Kapoor.

The one scene in Prem Rog that I can never forget is when a thorn pierces Kohlapure's foot and Rishi Kapoor removes it. She says, "Badi zid karne lage ho Dev (you've started acting really stubborn, Dev)." And he replies, "Tumne jo zid karni chhod di (now that you've stopped)." There's something lost in that translation but none in its impact in all these years.

What Raj Kapoor did to use a description from an anthology of cinema, was "aptly located the quintessentially 1950s quest for a national identity. His socio-political parables of human aspiration became emblematic of the small man dreaming big. He co-mingled popular cinema with cinematic poetry and attained synergy between his two selves as actor and director. His uniqueness lay in his being able to appeal to the head and to the heart".

In doing so, there may have been times when he let his heart get headed, though his head ultimately came up trumps. Disillusioned with the setback of Mera Naam Joker he locked himself up for over a year and immersed himself in Archie comics. Bobby may have had nothing to do with Archie in content but the level of youthful energy was comparable and so was Dimple's wardrobe that borrowed all polka-dots and mini skirts from the comic strip character of Veronica. It is a strange thought but when a '90s filmmaker like me goes back to the updated version of the same comic for inspiration it shows an ability to absorb, more than bubble-gum mentality and an aw-gee outlook that works for the tone of current commercial cinema. The only time he went wrong was with MNJ. I knew it was his favourite film and I tried liking it but I think he was just being indulgent as a director. He went away too early. He was good for at least two more great films.

Karan Johar is a Mumbai-based filmmaker.

Lata Mangeshkar
As an outsider, it's not easy to tell what makes Lata Mangeshkar tick. But as an insider, it's clear that she's in a different class.

She brought dignity to playback singing. More important, she brought dedication. There's this apocryphal story about how Dilip Kumar met her on a train many years ago and said, "Ah, you're the Marathi singer who can't pronounce Urdu properly." Lata, so goes the story, learnt Urdu to fill that gap in her repertoire. Before a recording begins, she makes sure she has the pronunciations right and gets all the information she needs about the film -- the situations, the name of the heroine, the age of the character and so on. "Heroines themselves forget to ask the character's age, but not Lataji," says Gulzar.

Finicky, Lata doesn't suffer fools easily. She makes no attempt to hide her annoyance either -- it's usually a cutting remark or a piercing look over the rim of her glasses, a trademark with her. But they are almost always taken in their stride.

Where Lata has drawn real flak is over the issue of her high pitch. Over the years, a higher pitch, a certain loudness have come to grab immediate attention -- we call it "punch" in the industry. Lata was and is the best at it, she goes as high as G and E-Sharp and yet manages melody. Aye mere watan ke logon, which prompted Jawaharlal Nehru to call her the Nightingale, was sung in high pitch but the voice control was superbly intact.

There has also been much criticism that Lata sabotages the careers of upcoming artists. It's a criticism that Lata does not take lightly; she once asked me if there was any truth in such statements. For me, it does not matter. Lata is a reality. And film music as we know it would be incomplete without her. .

Vishal Bharadwaj is a Mumbai-based music composer.