BOOK REVIEW
Bollywood Boy
by Justine Hardy
John Murray HK$235
Review by P.Ramakrishnan
TRUTH BE TOLD, we do judge a book by its cover and the assaulting pink backdrop and floral brocade of this novel ensures sore eyes on sight.
It is a travelogue of sorts that follows the author's quest in nabbing an interview with Hrithik Roshan, one of the biggest Indian actors working today. In turn, the author finds herself on seamy sets of B-grade Bollywood flicks or at home with besotted teenage girls, desperate for an autograph of the elusive star. It all adds up to a humourous glimpse at the ingredients and audiences that feed the Hindi film factory.
But the author fails miserably to provide any real insight into the multi-billion-rupee industry that entertains more than one billion Asians (subtitled Indian musicals reach Malaysian, Thai, Russian and Singaporean audiences).
Scratching the surface of Indian celluloid, the vacuous conclusion derived is that there is some inexplicable order in the chaotic sets of the "fantasy factory" - a phrase repeated throughout the book. We are informed it's a superficial dream world - hardly groundbreaking stuff. Whey some stars hit the big league with their first film (as the cover boy does), while others end up in poverty and prostitution is never fully examined and after touching on the premise, we cut to meeting an actor on a set.
When not describing and deifying the screen hunks she's seen outside a Mumbai club ("his shirt flew open for all to see. His chest rippled, his torso gleamed"), the book rolls along well. The pathos-filed ambitions of a an unknown and struggling actress, the supporting artists she meets on the set of Snip, an Anglo-Indian movie, and the residual fame that illuminates the author as she reveals to others her appointment with the star, are very funny.
Written primarily for a Western audience, she wheels out far too much local lingo (italicised, of course) to highlight how well she immersed herself in the kitschy culture of popular cinema. Without an English translation for the novices and using the simplest syntax in Hindi, I wondered who exactly she was trying to impress?
The book is peppered with pictures of various Indian stars with astute captions, such as "Hrithik's hair-do had been puzzling me", just about encapsulating how seriously one needs to consider this 262-page ode to a muscle-bound, all singing-all-dancing hero and the phoney land he rules.
There is much tongue-in-cheek humour that provides a good read and plenty of laughs, but I often wished she'd kept her tongue in check instead.
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