Shammi Kapoor

Cardinal signs take seven of his ten planets, a heavy concentration in the part of the zodiac that begins things, and the elements divide three in fire, three in air and two apiece in earth and water. Kapoor acted in Hindi films, and the record says his dancing changed what the hero in them looked like.

The Sun, the Moon and Mercury all sit in Libra inside eleven degrees of one another, the Sun at twenty seven, the Moon at eighteen and Mercury at sixteen. That is identity, private feeling and speech gathered in the one sign that will not act without the other party. Mars sits on the first degree of Leo, drive right at the opening of the sign that wants the room. For a performer remembered for what he did in front of an audience rather than for anything he said, those two facts sit together neatly.

Venus is tied to three planets at once. It sits in hard contact with Jupiter at nineteen hundredths of a degree, square Neptune at a third, and in that same hard contact with Pluto at just over a degree, so taste is pulled at by scale, by image and by concentrated force in turn. Jupiter sits conjunct Pluto at nine tenths and in mild friction with Neptune at fourteen hundredths. Uranus alone was retrograde at his birth. Venus rules both his Libra Sun and his Libra Moon, which puts the planet under all that pressure in charge of the chart. In an industry where the dancing is the performance, a Venus under pressure from three directions is the planet doing the most work.

He died in Mumbai on 14 August 2011, at eighty, in the city the record gives as his birthplace. Pluto stood in easy contact with his natal Neptune two hundredths of a degree from exact, the closest thing in that sky, and Uranus did the same with his natal Venus at seven tenths, which carries weight because Venus rules the sign both his lights sit in. Saturn stood directly opposite his natal Uranus and Mars opposite his natal Saturn, both inside two thirds of a degree. The Moon was full and a hundred per cent lit, the phase that sees a thing clearly and usually through other people. Three planets gathered in Libra, in a man whose work was done in front of a crowd, is the fact to keep from this chart.