The Book Is Nearly Done!

Hey, what's up with your book?

Arre - read the title of this post, yaar! It is nearly done.

Over the last seven-odd month, my editor has been hard at work trying to correct the million grammatical errors that I had made in the manuscript.

I was hard at work calling producers asking for permission and high-res versions of stills from their films.

In fact, I have worked harder at sourcing pictures to go with the text than I worked at writing the damn text.

Though the consolation was that I got to speak / write to some of the biggest names of the country's film industry.

Some of the experiences were quite sad.

Some of them were very exciting.

"I have selected the stills but I have to show them to Mani-sir once before I send them."
"Mani-sir? Mani Ratnam?"
"Yes, sir. He's on a location recce. He will be back on Tuesday."
"Location? Where?"
"I can't tell you, sir..."

Like the time I wrote to the CEO of a production house if he can share photographs or storyboards from an unmade film of theirs. And he replied...

It is interesting that you are considering ***** in your chapter of 'unmade films' since it is back in development and therefore, we won't be able to share any related material. The tagline on the poster says pretty much everything we want to say at this point. I won't be able to comment on the plot right now.

These responses more than made up the frustration of having wait endlessly with some other houses.

Achha, all that is fine... but what is it going to be called?

That is a million-dollar question. The 'working title' was The Book of Bollywood Lists which - while accurate and descriptive - wasn't likely to attract too many readers.

I asked the readers of this blog for names and I had some very interesting suggestions like:

- Bolly Mera Naam

- Matinee Matters

- Cine Maa: The Mother of Bollywood Lists

- BollyListic: 50 Bollywood Lists

- BollyFan: A Fan's Handbook to Bollywood

- Hi Fi List: Trivia from Hindi Films

But the name (or part of it) that was suggested by the most number of people and because it is from a film that I just love, the name finally is (drum roll):

KITNAY AADMI THAY: COMPLETELY USELESS BOLLYWOOD TRIVIA.

So, there... we have a name, we have almost fixed the designer for the cover and we are gunning for a May 2012 release - coinciding with the beginning of celebrations around 100 Years of Bollywood. (Yup, Raja Harishchandra released in May 1913 and Bollywood is gearing up to pay tribute for the entire year.)