Of fairy tales, of lives really lived
Sadya Afreen Mallick goes through some starry experience
Salaam Bollywood, The Pain and the Passion, Bhawana Somaaya, Spantech & Lancer, Surrey, England
Bollywood is a strange, quixotic place. First, you wonder why that term 'Bollywood' has come to be attached to the world's largest movie industry. Couldn't someone have devised a better term rather than aping Hollywood? That aping has led to such puerility as Lollywood (to describe the Pakistani movie industry in Lahore) and Dhaliwood, here in Bangladesh. Then comes the fairy tale aspect of the Indian film industry. It still tends to operate in a world of unreal songs, fantasy dances and love stories that always end up with the man and the woman ready to live happily ever after. Realism is something you are yet to get out of Bollywood. Sure, of late there have been movies which have verged on the realistic. But when you think of realism, you tend to think more in terms of what enlightened auteurs like Satyajit Ray and Aparna Sen have produced in Bengal. But, yes, you would be right to suggest that by and large the West Bengal film industry too has fallen prey to the unreal world of Hindi movies. There are the dances, the sudden appearances of chorus boys and girls once the leading man and woman break into a love song and the all too familiar scenes of the hero (as we still describe these lover boys in our part of the world) beating every villain (and there are scores of them) to a pulp in the battle between good and evil. In many ways, the Indian movie is still a morality play. It is yet miles away from the modern sensibilities we are susceptible to these days. Having said that, we cannot but acknowledge the fact that the lives and careers of Indian movie stars have exercised our imaginations endlessly. The illness which threatened Amitabh Bachchan's career some years ago, the affair he is said to have had with Rekha despite Jaya Bhaduri's presence in his life, the marriage of his son Abhishek to Aishwarya Roy are some of the innumerable instances movie enthusiasts cite in South Asia to explain their deep attachment to the film world. It is in line with that attraction or enthusiasm that quite some years ago Bhawana Somaaya came up with Salaam Bollywood. Since then, of course, Somaaya has written other books, notably a well-regarded biography of Hema Malini. In the work under review, it is a whole panoply of stars she strings together and puts across to readers in their celluloid as well as real life form. You could say that there is much that is real about her story telling. At the same time, there is the distinctive feeling that you are into some gossip-mongering here. You cannot put the book down, if what Somaaya places before you is a recapitulation of the tempestuous relationship Shabana Azmi shared with Smita Patil. They were rivals and they were friends. They did not wish to be seen together and yet could not resist the urge to get in touch with each other. If you have seen Arth, where Azmi plays wife to Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Patil the other woman, you will have a good idea of how the two women related to each other. Then Smita Patil died, young, beautiful and popular. Suddenly, Azmi's world was left pretty empty. But, then, she had another world, one she wanted to share with Javed Akhtar. Much hide-and-seek went into the making of the climax, as Somaaya notes here. In the end, however, Azmi and Akhtar did marry and have lived what can easily be called a charmed life since. The writer takes readers on a journey, sort of, around the Raj Kapoor-Nargis romance once more. In the company of Sunil Dutt and Sanjay Dutt, Nargis turns up at the Kapoors' for a wedding. There is tension, initially. And then the ice breaks. Of Sanjay, Somaaya has a lot to say in this narrative. Prone to drugs, leaning to dissoluteness, the child of Sunil and Nargis Dutt is a problem. But when it comes to Meena Kumari, Somaaya is irresistibly drawn to her. Her fascination with Meena Kumari has been there since childhood. As Sarika tells her, the most famous tragedienne of Indian cinema was 'a fountain of love --- ethereal and attractive.' Somaaya thinks Nutan was feminine and Waheeda Rehman was fragile. But Meena Kumari, for her, was an addiction. Quite a few pages are given over to the romance and wedding of Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh. And, yes, there are accounts of Dimple Kapadia we have not known about. On the sets of Saagar, she and Rishi Kapoor pour tumblers of water on themselves as part of a romantic scene about to be captured on camera. Director Ramesh Sippy, supervising it all, tells Dimple, "Wet your hair . . .more. . .still more." There are then the tales of Raakhee, her unhappy marriage and her tortuous journey through the film world. With Raakhee, notes the writer, each encounter was somehow a vale of tears. The actress was unhappy about slipping into character roles so early in her career. For her it was saying goodbye to her sex appeal for good. There are moments Somaaya cannot forget, indeed will not. She remembers the time when Mandakini was in top form; she recalls Waheeda Rehman's diffidence playing an old woman's role; and she will not forget how Dilip Kumar watched Amitabh Bachchan's Akayla stone-faced. And the time when Mahesh Bhatt talked about rape scenes in films? In his view, the heroine could not be dressed in trousers 'because it's important for the heroine to look feminine to arouse the villain.' Raj Kapoor said it better: "The more covered a woman, the better she looks." That surely does little to prevent some women from being in denial mode when it comes to reports of their romance. Amrita Singh was defiant in the face of rumours of her links with the young Saif Ali Khan. She angrily tells the author, "Give me a break. He is so young. I don't understand why people assume it's love. Why is it so difficult to accept friendship?" We know the rest. That includes the sad tale of how their marriage ended up going nowhere. It simply evaporated.
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