Book Title: An Unsuitable Boy

Author: Karan Johar with Poonam Saxena

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

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Movies are great ways to live a dream and believe a lie that stands out like a sore thumb in your logical mind’s eye. When Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai came out I was just out of college going through an identity crisis. But the movie’s song track was my regular loop song that I would listen while working on my writing. Those were the tape recorder days. About a fortnight later, singers sound as if they were crying in my ears because of over listening to the songs. Electronic tape had been abused once too often.

My mother was visiting my brother and sister in US and I was in-charge of the house. Every three days in a week, I would stomp off to my Veena classes at my teacher’s flat. I would be so in the songs from this movie that it was such a fascinating package of lies that I fell for hook, line and sinkers.

The Karan Johar that I recognized as him was from Koffee with Karan series. I never thought Karan as effeminate person, but saw him as someone who spoke his mind. Of course, he was hip and fashionable for the moment. But I did feel his K3G was passé. Of course, I understand that bringing together the family that is in disagreement is a simple stuff blown beyond.

But heck, I love all the songs from all of Karan’s films. I tell you; just try selling a non-musical to an Indian audience, the seller would be in deep shit. Indian audience wants to be wined, dined, and danced around trees to boot. Honestly how many album sellers make it with just audio?!! Mix the audio with a visual you get the magic in the roundabouts.

Karan was never my favorite, but then there is no favorite in the film industry. I just go to movies for the stories, if I laugh, cry, sigh or just be emotional just a bonus. But of late, I have stopped watching movies in multiplexes. I just do the waiting game, and then, low behold the movie gets screened in one of the movie channels of the satellite television.

Karan sold off India in the crème of crème lifestyles and you don’t go to his movies thinking that you have discovered the deep-seated truth. Maybe you would see the illusion of truth, where you are in mid-heaven for three hours. In that duration, you forget your surroundings and at the end of which you land with a thud on your cushioned multiplex seat. Welcome back to reality!

Karan’s autobiography is also about feel good, nah! He is an old hand at making you feel comfortable, and then, drop the bombshell of his specific spice of understanding.

Of course, he made socializing sound like as if it is just drinking tea in the afternoon. Excuse me, let me tell you I am a social freakout case, I have a hard time talking in a team meeting for just four people. I am not risking my butt for anything social.

There was something exceptional when you listen to Karan talk his mind and that magic came through in this book. I read the book non-stop until 174 pages in a day. It was only when the forced break of my life came in that I had a hard time finishing the balance of the book.

Karan was everywhere in the film industry. From picking costumes to lines helping roles to manhandling the camera with sensitivity, I must say I was impressed. He threw titles of movies that smacked of wealth and panache. I wondered if Satyajit Ray is turning in his grave.

Yeah, I’m that brand of viewer who is looking for purpose and deeper meaning to life and other factors. But even they would like to be entertained and have fun. That way Karan’s movies are fun to watch and sometime overly sentimental. Then get ready to check out that heart-soul-mind mingle in his book too.

A lone camera man trying to see this world with his color tint glasses in search of the truth and realism interested viewers must once have a watch of those movies that were completely just fam-dram-cram. I was totally taken in by his insecurities and strengthen which is as unique as he himself is. He is not afraid to voice it. Interestingly his entire voyage with the movie industry is exceptional and funky like him.

I would recommend a onetime read which would be fascinating as a Geminian character alone can bring to light. But surely I found a match with my reading as a true undecided Libran. Now I have comfortably boxed him into a stereo-type that will revise as I go along. Worth it for once, at least!

Book Title: Khullam Khulla | Rishi Kapoor Uncensored

Author: Rishi Kapoor with Meena Iyer

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

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Rishi Kapoor has been my childhood hero whose acting used to have a light and frivolous carefree feel to it. There were innumberable of his movie songs that I remember swing to with no sense of movement. But heck who care how you danced as long as you were happy with the song.

So this year’s The Hindu Lit for Life 2017 book festival was a welcome invitation to pick some books. So as usual I hit the book stall like I was the bull in the Jallikattu with the right touch of patience. I didn’t wish to be the charging bull in a China shop.

Anyway, I was skimming the shelf for a book to pick. Of late my interest in Creative Non-Fiction has become an obsession. So naturally, Autobiographies comes under Non-Fiction category, my eyes zeroed in on the two prominent celebrities and the book was being charged for on my card.

I was waiting for a workshop to begin, so I just found a nice cozy corner that I could possibly find in the crowded festival venue. Soon everything public just vanished as Rishi’s words captured my imagination.

Words have a way with my mind and I must say that there has been a great effort on the writing team to make it simple and easy to understand. I felt so relaxed as I was reading up the incidence and experience of the actor spoken from the angle of someone finding his way around his profession.

Rishiji didn’t get everything easily though he did have someone to launch which meant that he had to come with the baggage of expectation. With his father being a recognized actor, it is far more intense because the old timer attitude for actor’s sons and daughters make it to filmistan as immediate superstar is rather hard on the child.

Even though Rishiji doesn’t talk a lot about his time trying to manage all those thoughts that became a part of his character set in the industry. He is very careful with his angle towards his emotion. There is a marked restraint of a seasoned actor and yet he does speak of his relationship with such candor that the reader will like him for his plain speaking.

But there were some aspect of his industry based relation that seem to be rather affected. My inference on this point has been based on the way the book flowed from the point of his entry in cinema with the scene of walking in the rain in a raincoat for a song sequence in Raj Kapoor’s movie.

There is much of little of everything that Rishiji speaks about in his work that gives the reader an insight into the actor’s mind. Given that the Kapoor family is known as actor producers, I am wondering if Rishi Kapoor was a reluctant actor but eventually got interested in his career while being subjected to pampering and heightened expectation.

Though his friends are almost all from the film industry and I didn’t get to know anyone with whom he had created a bond. That reserved part of Rishiji is clearly felt throughout the book.

Seriously, there is no information about having any incident in the set expect for his multiple angle shot and repeating the scene multiple number of time until it is perfect. His gripe about not being able to pull off n-number retakes from different angles seemed so out of sort for his sensitivity.

Eventually, as we encounter the grown up Rishji it was very interesting. The fan following that one finds in past and in the present and maybe even in the future is that actor are 360 degree from social media boom day. I fear for the current day actors because they can’t be themselves away from the maddening crowd.

That way Rishiji era hero are given innumerable view of the past, present and glimpse of future trend of an actor. His book brought out that beautifully. Because, after all Romeo of Shakespeare, is still the young man with his heart beating in synch with the romance in the air.

Rishiji has evolved in his movies and his book might seem like a list of movies that he had done and nothing much. But without his knowledge the color that he had given his work reflects in the angle of narration.

Enjoyable read if you are fan of Rishiji, if you are more for the old fashioned restrained hero who couldn’t be wrong. But Rishiji as a person, I would love to have a cuppa with him and talk about his work. If you want that feel then I suggest that you grab this book and a cup of steaming tea and rock that conversation.