Are we like that only?

Imagine! A cursory Bollywood history (of sorts) tells you Kishore Kumar was “a relatively unknown actor” before Padosan (1968) – and banking on our willing suspension of disbelief against all hope! This sloppily written and shoddily edited paperback makes no mention whatsoever of Rajesh Khanna and V Shantaram. If memory serves, Kishore Kumar was a renowned comedian of long standing much earlier. Remember Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi released exactly a decade before Mehmood’s cult classic? The omission of Rajesh Khanna too is curious, almsot callous – especially considering his singing voice was Kishore Kumar in most of his movies. (RK scored eleven hits in a row followed by eight flops.) Shantaram’s Duniya Na Maney is considered a landmark in societal filmmaking. Could it be a case of selective amnesia, I wonder? Considering the high editorial standards of the book’s renowned publishers (after all, they’ve India’s No.1 print columnist-novelist on their marquee), it’s also irritating to come across such erratic but obvious blunders as “Dean Martin and Bing Crosby’s Road series”. Well, to err is human, I guess, and we all are like that only.

Legendary story telling. Wire to wire.

Born to write. Poetic prose. Word magic. Sorry, I’m bogged down in clichés trying to tell you about one of the greatest reads I came across in a long, long time. I sensed this was it when I was glancing at the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit: An American Legend in Strand Book Stall. I’m almost as good a judge of books as Tom Smith, Seabiscuit’s trainer, was of horseflesh. No empty boast that one, believe you me. There’s first-rate story (and history) telling in those 314 tightly written pages, not a word wasted. By contrast, another ‘legend’ book I read recently about Kishore Kumar paled in comparison. It seemed overwritten, plodding, bordering on hagiography. Maybe, I’ve a weakness for well-crafted narratives where every well-chosen word adds to the forward march of the story and reading pleasure. More about the Seabiscuit book at http://www.seabiscuitonline.com/index1.htm. More about the KK book at http://kanaad.blogspot.com/ (16 July 2003 post). By the way, what makes Seabiscuit so special is that Hillenbrand researched and wrote it while suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome all throughout the four years of toil. Her grit and courage matched her subject’s, stride for stride, till the winning post. Seabiscuit was on the NY Times bestseller list, at No.1 for about a month.