Bollywood’s factions

Some of the prominent Hindi film personalities turn to the pen in this anthology to reveal intense facets of and incidents in their lives which have altered their basic worldviews, says ANANYA BORGOHAIN

FACTION: Short Stories by 22 Film Personalities

Author: Khalid Mohamed

Publisher: Om Books, Rs 395

Khalid Mohamed’s Faction is a compilation of 22 short narratives by Hindi film personalities, majorly exhibiting an autobiographical tenor. Mohamed himself dons diverse hats ranging from that of a film director to a journalist. Hence his attempt to design a versatile anthology of personal experiences by equally contrasting actors and directors of Hindi cinema does not come as a surprise. The stories have either been written by the personas themselves, or have been narrated to Mohamed who has in turn penned and coloured them in his own words. Shyam Benegal, Sai Paranjpye, Ashok Kumar, Rahul Bose, Ashutosh Gowariker, Karan Johar, Deepika Padukone, Basu Chatterjee, Shekhar Kapur, Om Puri, Rishi Kapoor, Manoj Bajpayee, Nana Patekar, et al, are the sources of this edition which begins with Akshay Kumar’s chronicle of a love story which he had witnessed blossoming in a local train in Mumbai. The story unfolds as the strangers meet, fall in love, and marry only to find themselves soon in a state of utter disarray. Their conjugal saga is keenly documented by a young Rajiv (Kumar) who is otherwise subservient to the plot.

Then, there is the tale, ‘Speaking of Mr and Mrs Pinto’, by Karan Johar, a strikingly honest account of a young Karan battling his inner demons that would “prefer playing hopscotch with the girls to playing gully cricket with the boys”. Mr and Mrs Pinto furnish Karan with an agency to cope with and refine his shortcomings and polish his gift of the gab. They insert in him the self-confidence and endow upon him the warmth of parental affection.

Ashok Kumar’s inconclusive story, A Calcutta Story, which Mohamed collected from his daughter Bharati Jaffrey, is engaging and depicts the emotional turbulence in a complicated relationship between a love-seeking prostitute and her indifferent and cold-blooded client, Shubhang. Given Ashok Kumar’s penchant for writing and his association with literary erudite Saadat Hassan Manto, many of his delightful stories are said to have remained unpublished; in Khalid Mohamed’s own words, “What Manto and Dadamoni could have done with a film script adapted from ‘ACalcutta story’, tantalises the imagination.”

Both Rishi Kapoor and Manoj Bajpayee’s stories reveal how their respective courses of life would have been entirely different had they not been jilted by their lovers and had their aspirations not crumbled down when they were both abandoned by their partners. Bajpayee’s story is narrated in the form of an epistolary wherein only the postcards exchanged between him and his paramour from Paris have been published. In contrast, Ashutosh Gowariker’s tale puts forth gothic experiences of horror and evil spirits which his crew had experienced at a shooting set.

Sonam Kapoor’s ‘Girls’ night out’ brings back the memories of hostel life when probably everyone struggled with disgruntled and troubled relations while attempting to attune themselves with the quirks and idiosyncrasies of their roommates. Sonam’s protagonist is a “fat” Salonee who is inhibited by a conscious sense of body-image, an apprehension which engulfs almost every girl her age, and the story thus becomes effective as well as convenient to relate to.Shyam Benegal, in his quintessential outlook remembers a poor “chai boy” and a technician in his team who approaches him to read a letter written to him in Urdu by his newly wedded wife from their ancestral village. “I regarded Kasim as a friend, someone who shared his life with me.” writes Benegal. The filmmaker expresses that the experience of reading a letter from the newly wedded wife stayed with him and the story of a fictional letter writer in Benegal’s Welcome to Sajjanpur evolved from there. He adds, “I haven’t told Kasim about this but he must have guessed for sure. He may be unlettered but he’s perceptive. He wanted to be associated with movies and also gave birth to one.”

Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth and Paul is an address to his daughter Kaveri and is a story of two pigeons camouflaged under a layer of instilling family values and strengthening ties.

Two of the most appealing accounts are drafted by Farah Khan and Bobby Deol in ‘Guess who came to dinner’ and ‘When the rains came’ respectively. The former is a humorous reportage of Khan’s feisty and eccentric grandmother who once brought Jesus Christ home for dinner and on her deathbed asked the doctor for a chilled mangola and said “bye” before passing away. The latter is Deol’s emotional tribute to Bhag Singh, his father’s secretary and “the security blanket” of the family. Both the tales are vivid, sincere and gripping histories of personalities — Bhag Singh and grandma Perin — who were conscientious, strong willed and devoted but in bafflingly disparate fashions. What sets the stories apart from the rest is their non-condescending approach; neither attempts to invoke sympathy nor generate awe in the readers. They come across as unconditional rhetoric and memories of a departed dear one.

In a country like India where films are no less than a religion, curiosity to invade the personal spaces of the film stars is almost innate to the people. An anthology of their write-ups is then an invigorating and amusing idea. However, there is no balanced interplay of form and content in many of the accounts. Most of them are excessively romanticised to the extent of ostensibly coming across as hyperbolic and attention-seeking. For instance, Paranjpye’s story of a girl running into a stranger in an alien land has a predictable twist concerning the real identity of the stranger — it has hardly anything to uncover about him since her title ‘The Gigolo’ in itself is a giveaway! Likewise Arjun Rampal’s saga of turmoil and hardship in ruthless New York could have been much overwhelming had it not been written in an inescapably lousy manner. His mention of the wooden armrest of a bench at the Central Park could have been put forth in a far more delightful narrative technique. Both Deepika Padukone and Rahul Bose’s stories are too dragging and dull, whereas Basu Chatterjee’s tale, although pleasingly engaging, collapses due to the lack of a meaningful substance in the plot.

Faction might not be an ideal pick for a literature enthusiast, but it is reader-friendly and apt for the masses charmed by the glittering stars of Bollywood. It opens a window into their hitherto clandestine spaces and is told in simplistic magnitudes. It demonstrates a parallel image of the celebrities; an image that is universal and relatable. The book may locate loyalty in the non-reading masses and at the same time the life-imitating-art-and-vice-versa modus operandi that the anthology upholds makes it for an inviting reading as well.