Bollywood Strikes Back

Chasing Hrithik is always going to be a roller-coaster ride, but does Justine Hardy have to give currency to every cliche, asks Tanuja Chandra

Bollywood Boy
By Justine Hardy
John Murray
Price: £16.99

Not everyone is qualified to write a book on the Hindi film industry. You have to have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours on film sets, involved either in the dust and grime-filled business of film-making or in the thankless one of snooping on film-stars at work or play. You have to have experienced the giddying ecstasy of success and, more importantly, felt the nausea of failure; you have to have deeply enjoyed the drama of Hindi movies and sung again and again film songs that have resonated all over India. Justine Hardy doesn’t qualify on any of these counts.

An Outsider’s Unaffectionate, Patronising, White-man-burdened Look at Bollywood is what her book should have been titled. Except it’s not just that. It’s also as cliche-ridden as the movies she laughs at. Her story of chasing Hrithik Roshan for one year for an interview is interspersed with days spent in a neighbourhood beauty salon where Hrithik-adoring Punjabi housewives exchange gossip and talk about food, fashion and films! Then there is the choreographer of old films, now turned dance teacher for aspirants, who lives alone with her dog. There is the wise, old Muslim juice-wallah who says wise things like, ‘‘Big filmi director sahibs are trying to solve all of my country’s problems by making a boy who advertises Coca-Cola [into a Muslim terrorist]?’’ There are of course the countless flies, the garbage on the roads, the cows stopping traffic, and the master stroke — that trip to Falkland Road’s red light area where an actress of yesteryears lives, surrounded by disease and derision, as a prostitute turned madam.

Now all this would have been fine, had no value judgements been made and moralities imposed. She shows controlled contempt for film-stars but every second of her meeting with the prostitute is transformed into a ‘‘moment’’ stuffed with enough poignancy to manipulate your heart into heaving an artificial ‘‘aaha’’. ‘‘I was so happy,’’ the prostitute says, and Hardy writes, ‘‘Silence fell down around us again. Two flies copulated lazily beside the samosas.’’ If only Hardy wasn’t so impressed with her own special insight into human tragedy, the writing would have been more evocative and moving. She has pre-judged the film industry as well as India and forces the real characters to fit into the plot she has scripted.

It’s irresponsible of her to talk of film-stars as if they belonged in a cartoon strip. Surely she realises that they are real, living people and not the fantasy characters they portray on screen. Hindi movies might well be absurd, unrealistic, silly but the people in them and the people making them are not! They work like dogs, their sweat is as real as their make-up. Millions of dollars is a luxury we seldom have to produce films and still the largest number of movies in the world are made here, in the most difficult and trying circumstances. So, a little generosity and spirit of fun towards the subject that puts her name on a hardback cover would have made Hardy’s book sweeter, more worthy. Glibness and a clever collection of phrases have never made a book memorable.

Hardy indulges in exactly the dramatic devices she finds so melodramatic in Hindi movies. ‘‘In Bombay the Underworld is king,’’ she announces and then says that because of the murders, assassination attempts and uncountable extortion threats in the late 90’s, ‘‘the filmi crowd began to get jumpy’’. This hugely belittles the very real fear that the filmi crowd felt.

Sadly, Justine Hardy is convinced that her value system is decent and liberal whereas the place she writes of and its people are undependable, insensitive, full of noise and hypocrisy. Now, while this may often be true, it’s not the only truth. Had the writer sought to connect with other, deeper truths, the real anguish film folk struggle with, Bollywood Boy would have been more than just a surface-scratcher. And Justine Hardy’s sharp sense of observation, her awesome memory, her penchant to laugh, her unbeatable drive and her formidable energy could have resulted in a wonderful book on fascinating lives in sad Bollywood.

Tanuja Chandra is a Bombay-based film-maker