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With Bollywood finding its feet on Western shores, there is a demand for literature on the world’s second biggest film industry as well. To fulfil the need, seasoned journalist Kaveree Bamzai has come up with Bollywood Today, a beginner’s guide to current Bollywood. “The book has been written with an international audience in mind,” concedes Kaveree, but adds she is surprised it has been received well in France and Germany as well. A Roli publication, the book profiles top actors and film-makers with a healthy dose of how the industry works. Despite its global presence, the author feels it is “still a homespun industry with traditional beliefs”.

Nagesh Kukunoor, Vishal Bharadwaj and Sriram Raghvan have no film dynasty to boast of, but Kaveree maintains it is the film families who run Bollywood. “It is not that a new set of people has come. It is just that the same old people are doing things differently. The families have corporatised. Subhash Ghai who gave us Khalnayak is giving a free hand to Nagesh Kukunoor to make Iqbal.” Kaveree avers it is not that the old guard is no longer egoistic. “It is just that their companies are listed now and they are answerable to the stakeholders.” Meanwhile, she adds, the expiry date of a filmmaker has become shorter. “The industry is in a state of flux. New things are happening every year. You need fresh ideas and newer people to make them happen. Now Yash Chopra can’t take three years to make a film. So he has turned his company on the lines of a studio.” Within Bollywood, Kaveree points out that hierarchical tendencies are still reflected from the difference in the way Ranbir Kapoor and Neil Nitin Mukesh were launched.“Take Imitaz Ali. He could have easily been forgotten after Socha Na Tha but the fact that he was able to make Jab We Met, reflects the change.”

In this hoopla, however, film-makers have virtually forgotten the 11000 screens in small towns. “They are not concerned about the Rs.20 seat. They are wooing the one who is ready to pay Rs.100 or more for a seat. It is because the audience has become segmented. The space has been filled by Bhojpuri and Punjabi films.”

On the absence of Akshay Kumar from the book, Kaveree admits it is a miss. “I wanted to include actors who have done well in the last decade. Though Akshay has been around, it is in the last three years that he has turned the tables on the established stars. In fact, according to the box office, last year he was the biggest star.”

The age-old charge of familiar film-makers scratching only the surface still holds good. Kaveree says they do so deliberately. “Sanjay Leela Bhansali has grown up in Bhindibazar known for its shootouts, so he doesn’t feel like making realistic films. For him everything is a spectacle.” And is it because Harivansh Rai Bachchan was a revered Hindi poet that his grandson Abhishek Bachchan didn’t feel like learning formal Hindi beyond class IV, as the book informs us? Kaveree bursts into laughter.

ANUJ KUMAR

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