Bollywood has always been a fascinating subject for any writer keen to make a fast buck with least effort.

The author of ‘Bollywood— A History’ is no different. In fact he has even gone a step further by using a modus operandi that involves reading up all the material available, picking up dainty morsels from each one of them, shrewdly sorting the chaff from the wheat and stringing them together, carefully compartmentalising them to good effect. And if this involves chewing the same cud, so be it.

With a bibliography that runs to over ten pages, Bose has little to offer the reader by way of originality and research and if one were to discount the views of Shyam Benegal the ace director on various aspects of cinema and the short interviews with the current crop of leading stars and filmmakers this work would be a complete déjà vu, especially for avid readers and cineastes who know Bollywood like the back of their hands.

Of course one cannot fault the text as the author has started right from the beginning with the stories of Dadasaheb Phalke, Himansu Rai, P C Barua, Ardeshir Irani Devika Rani, Shantaram and a whole host of others with the rise and fall of studios like New Talkies, Bombay Talkies etc thrown in for good measure.

The making of the two magnum opuses of a bygone era, K Asif’s ‘Mughal e Azam’ and Mehbbob Khan’s ‘Mother India’ has also been dealt with in detail.

While ‘Dadamoni’ Ashok Kumar has merited extensive coverage followed by the triumvirate of Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor who ruled the roost for several decades, actors like Shammi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar have been given short shrift.

Same old, same old...

A good number of pages have been used up for dishing out Bollywood trivia like stale romances, how Dharmendra whisked away Hema Malini in the nick of time preventing her from tying the knot with her Mama’s choice, Jeetendra; Sanjeev Kumar’s unrequited love for the dreamgirl and so on.

While Lata Mangeshkar deservedly finds a place in the book, the accent is less on her singing prowess and more on her secret crush for composer Ramachandra.

The author has concentrated more on the early years, perhaps the halcyon days of Bollywood and but for a treatise on the angry young man, Amitabh Bachchan and a write-up on ‘Sholay’, again generously pinched from already written works, there is hardly anything on contemporary cinema— with even someone like Subhash Ghai who gave the industry some of its well known heroines like Madhuri Dixit, Manisha Koirala and Meenakshi Seshadri and some of its biggest hits— not getting adequate coverage.

Benegal, however has been rewarded for his cooperation and Bose has sketched the auteur’s career graph right from his first film ‘Ankur’. ‘Bollywood— A History’ is by no means a page turner and for an author who has written more than twenty books on diverse subjects, Bose’s prose appears pedestrian and laboured.

One reviewer has commented that the book is shallow, derivative, too long and insufferably tedious. While that would be too harsh a criticism, the book can hardly pass muster as an engaging chronicle of the history of Hindi cinema.

Bose’s finest books have been on cricket, where he seems to have always been on a good wicket. This is his maiden foray into the world of arc lights and while the stars continue to shimmer as they always will, as does the never aging Rekha on the cover, the author has clearly failed to deliver.

BOLLYWOOD – A HISTORY
BY MIHIR BOSE
ROLI BOOKS
PP 380 PRICE RS.495