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Tfter the
drought, the deluge. Once upon a time, finding a book on Bollywood was
as rare as making a hit. Now, they are weighing down the bookshelves.
In the past six months, three books called Bollywood (authors: Nasreen
Munni Kabir, Ashok Banker and editor Lalit Mohan Joshi) have been released
alongside a slew of The Making of ... books (Sholay, Asoka, Kabhi Khushi
Kabhie Gham). With an Oscar nomination and a West End musical, Bollywood
is clearly the global flavour of the month.
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BOLLYWOOD BOY
By Justine Hardy
John Murray
Price: £7.50
Pages: 264 |
Which is perhaps why Justine Hardy, a British journalist, writer and
documentary filmmaker, has written a book about Hrithik Roshan, who has
two years of superstardom and five films to his credit. But Hrithik connoisseurs
be warned-this isn't a biography with rare insights of and interviews
with the actor. Hardy barely got to spend an afternoon with him. Instead
she documents a year spent chasing Hrithik. Bollywood Boy is her voyage
through the chaotic Hindi film industry.
Hardy goes everywhere-from the Olive restaurant where the Bollywood
bratpack hangs around to the flesh market of Falkland Road where she meets
a small-time actress-turned-madam. She attends shootings, reads Stardust
and interviews stars like Anupam Kher. But what might have been a fly-on-the-wall
perspective of a fascinating subculture is only a banal saga of an outsider
in Bollywood. There is little understanding and even less affection.
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| BIG BOYS: Hardy barely got to spend a day with
Hrithik |
Hardy reduces Bollywood to a film factory, which has been churning out
variations of the "boy meets girl" formula since the 1970s.
Her tone is patronising-"Boy is suddenly all smiles, and the soundtrack
swells as our hero and heroine start lip-synching furiously in time to
the song as they shimmy their way to romantic nirvana"-and her knowledge,
sketchy. The millennial candyfloss stories have little in common with
the angry young man of 30 years ago. Worse, Hardy subscribes to the unsophisticated
view of Hindi cinema as escapist opium for the masses-there is even a
photograph of a garbage heap with the caption: The reality from which
Bollywood offers escape, a Bombay backstreet.
It is vapid musings mixed with half-baked generalisations. Hardy insists
that "most of" the film folk have "dealt with the world
of organised crime at some points in their careers-a little help here
and there ... nearly everyone had dues to pay". She also writes that
"India's film industry has more fatal and disabling accidents each
year than that of any other country" but fails to mention any statistics
or the source of this information. Some facts are incorrect-she writes
Subhash Ghai's Yaadein has the lead actress being "attacked by crocodiles
on the Thames as is wont to happen beyond the Thames Barrier". Actually
the film specifies that the incident takes place in Malaysia. And to top
it all, the writing is clumsy. Mumbai is described as "a woman's
body in recline" where "breasts are surmounted by nipples of
wealth".
Bollywood Boy isn't much fun. Watch a Bollywood film instead.
 
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CURRENT
ISSUE MARCH 25, 2002
India:
Development and Participation
Afghanistan
and the Great Game
The
Tiger in India: A Natural History
Elsa's
Joint and Some Goan Characters
Mehrauli:
A View from the Qutb
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