JOIN USA chronicler’s ringside view
Actors, buried in the sands of time: Will be dusted off and made sublime.”
Rudyard Kipling, quoted by the Hollywood heartthrob Errol Flynn in his memoirs ‘My Wicked, Wicked Ways’.
In recent times, two books on Bollywood (though I hate to use this derogatory term), have stood out: Amit Khanna’s ‘Words, Sounds, Images’ and now Shaheen Raaj’s superb book: ‘Nostalgia: A Trip Down Memory Lane with Bollywood Celebs’.
There’s always a streak of wistfulness to the word nostalgia that takes you back in time with a sigh, smile and sadness. Shaheen has lived life to the hilt and like a dispassionate spectator to the cavalcade of time, has drawn a litany of memories out of his nostalgic experiences to write an engaging tome that entombs a wealth of information and insights into Bollywood celebs.
An amorphous world
Bollywood is an amorphous world and its denizens often have a larger-than-life image. But they too are humans like all of us with their euphoria and anxiety, joys and insecurities. The book has hit the stands at an opportune time when Bollywood is much maligned due to the unfortunate death of a young actor, Sushant Singh Rajput. Shaheen is a completely honest chronicler of Bollywood and provides a ringside view.
In other words, he’s an official amanuensis who chronicles what happens in the tinsel town and how fate has flung the dice in the lives of film stalwarts past and present. American poet T S Eliot dug out the metaphysical John Donne and resuscitated him after nearly 300 years. In the same manner, many a forgotten actor has been ferreted out from the dungeon of times. Hitherto interred in the sands of time and circumstances, many characters who once graced the marquee, have got a new lease of life, thanks to Shaheen.
The author has a rare, nay uncanny, quality to highlight the unknown aspects of an actor’s persona. Nothing is perfunctory about Shaheen. That’s the reason, Mohammad Rafi is embellished and adorned with facts most readers would not be aware of. Lastly, Shaheen was Dr Allama Iqbal’s favourite metaphor for its indomitable spirit.
The bird shaheen (falcon, but precisely, an osprey) is endowed with gimlet eyes and it soars very high in the azure blue. True to his name, the author of the book Shaheen Raaj has a pair of sharp, gimlet eyes. Nothing escapes his experienced eyes. To quote Dr Muhammad Iqbal from Payaam-e-Mashriq, ‘Maanind-e-shaheen nazar rakhta hoon/Zarra bhi kaaynaat nazar aata hai mujhe’ (Like a hawk, I’m so sharp-sighted/Even a particle looks like the Universe to me). He deserves accolades to have written such an insightful book that describes and delineates Bollywood celebs from the past to the present. On the flip side, the price is a tad too high.