"There are a few colourful characters who inhabit Bollywood. They are the men and women who keep the magic alive, who tap into the pulse of audiences every day in darkened theatres across the country," writes journalist Kaveree Bamzai in Bollywood Today.

The writer says there remain a few Bollywood actors for whom the script is a criterion.

"These few people convince stars to do movies -- very few in Bollywood actually decide movies based on the script and take them on for reasons ranging from the emotional to the mercenary," she writes.

"These stars and filmmakers, who sell dreams, are also now selling reality, increasingly becoming part of the celebrity machine, a monster that the media has created and constantly fuels."

Bollywood may be behind Hollywood in terms of movies produced, ticket sales and revenues but the Indian film industry is a national fascination which sells magazines and newspapers, makes news headlines and is used to promote everything, from sensual dreams to fabric softeners, from national integration to potato chips.

"Bollywood makes almost 200 movies a year, selling an average of 2.5 billion USD worth in tickets with worldwide revenues of 1 billion USD (less than the box-office revenue of Titanic).

"In comparison, Hollywood produces over 700 movies a year, selling over 3.5 billion USD worth tickets a year with global revenues of over 50 billion USD. Yet Bollywood is India's magnificent obsession, rivalled only by cricket," says Bamzai.

New Bollywood, according to the writer, is a mix of old and new, convention and audacity, feudalism and fearless risk-taking, nepotism and neo-corporatisation.

"It is an industry, a status given as late as 1998 to a loose agglomeration of filmmakers whose movies grace 12,500 single screens and over 250 multiplexes in India every year," she writes.

Bollywood is also less organised than Hollywood, the writer claims.

"There are a handful of individual producers (not more than 10) who like to flatter themselves by calling themselves companies, a clutch of stars (not more than 15 big-ticket names, male and female), and even fewer directors, who are recognised by audiences, which are as diverse as they are exacting, extending from ramshackle single-screen theatres with faulty projectors in tiny towns to swish lounges in metropolitan multiplexes where a movie can be enjoyed along with a drink and hot meal.

"Studios here mean shooting floors where anything can be recreated, be it a disco in Manhattan or a dance bar in Mumbai. Make-up rooms are usually in Mercedes vanity vans owned by stars, and come equipped with DVD players, a bed and a makeshift table where lavish meals are served by silent valets."

"Movie marketing, perfected into a science by Hollywood, is still largely a hit-and-miss game in Mumbai, the result of partnerships struck by producers and stars with consumer goods companies looking for a glamorous rub-off.

"There are spectacular songs with actors who lip-sync to playback singers and chorus dancers from professional troupes or junior artistes."

The writer says that Bollywood dominates the Indian landscape as well as the imagination, making news 24x7, whether it is the engagement of two stars, the hospitalisation of a superstar or the television debut of another icon.

"The days when fans worshiped the stars from afar, reading about their tragic, stormy or fantastic lives in fanzines and then watching them thunderstruck in hushed halls, are gone. Bollywood is always on now, and the tabloid reality of the filmmakers is sometimes a poor second to the fantasy it produces," she writes.

The book also attempts a flashback of the golden times of India cinema right from the first Indian full-length feature film Raja Harishchandra in 1913.

It highlights some of the epics of Bollywood --Devdas, Awaara, Do Bigha Zameen, Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam, Guide, Sholay and others.