Now that I have signed off all the proofs and sent Bollybook
to the printers, this might be a good time to tell you what the book is all
about.
A couple of years back, I wrote a book called Kitnay
Aadmi Thay which was a compilation of Completely Useless Bollywood Trivia. Basically fifty lists about
cool and/or oft-seen things in Hindi cinema – Bengalis, Miss Indias, newspapers,
Amitabh Bachchan, The Godfather rip-offs, mother characters and the like.
The book ran its course. All my friends were thrilled. Readers
of this blog were happy. The reviews weren’t too bad either.
So when KAT was in production and on shelves,
I started writing a sequel – fifty more lists of similarly cool things. How
many movies have blackboards in scenes and what for? How many heroines in
bikinis? How many heroes in towels? What are the cool things that happen just
before Intervals? Who made the coolest last-scene cameos?
When I pitched this sequel to an editor in Penguin, I saw it
as a second KAT. But Udayan Mitra – he of encyclopaedic Bollywood knowledge
– came up with the grand idea of combining KAT and the next fifty lists I had
written to bring out one mega-book of Bollywood trivia.
Something like those Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers. A book
that would be big enough to act as a weapon (or a shield) if the Salman and SRK
fans got too carried away. A book that would be chock-a-block with juicy
nuggets from our favourite films. And some from our not-so-favourite ones as
well.
I decided to name it Bollybook, hopefully a happy mix of
encyclopaedic authority and filmy quirkiness.
So Bollybook has 100 lists... a subtle tribute to
Bollywood’s favourite number – be it in weeks or crores.
It also has a whole mess of trivia boxes, quizzes, photos,
jokes and footnotes... pretty much every white space we could find in the 460
pages, we packed it with some stuff. (As evidence, I am attaching a shot of a part of Page 243 that is a chapter on the best towel scenes and ends with a trivia boxes on bathing scenes. See what I mean?)
KAT did not have contents pages or an index, which came across as a bit of a problem. This time, we have added both so that you can quickly figure out the page(s) where Jaani
Dushman appears. (Pages 6 and 39, if you are interested.)
My good friends and loyal readers who had bought/read KAT
will find those fifty chapters again.
But I can assure you there will be many new entries in those
lists, new trivia boxes, new photos added, clunky sentences written better and
other updates made so that you don’t feel short-changed. Hopefully overwhelmed
but surely not short-changed.
We are marketing it as The Big Book of Hindi Movie Trivia.
And when I say BIG, maa kasam I mean it.
So Bollybook will soon be at a bookstore near you. At the
price of two movie tickets, I promise you it will be a longer lasting – well –
kick than Akshay Kumar's adventures with a dog.
And you do want to know about Boney’s Law of Spatial
Time-Space Coordinate, don’t you?
Comments