Star shadows

Kishwer Desai on Sunil And Nargis Dutt
���I lived with Nargis and Sunil Dutt for two years!���
���I was obsessed with my subjects. I met Sunilji for an introductory chat. Then, I spent time with his and Nargis��� family. I lived with Nargis and Sunil Dutt for two years. I had no other life ��� I watched their movies, read about them, met their family and went through their diaries and letters.I had found a wonderful letter from Sunil Dutt in which he wrote about ���finding��� himself. No one in the family had referred to it. I became a detective. I discovered that he had been lost, and almost given up for dead during a film shoot in the 1970s in Kashmir. He referred to the incident in passing in the letter. I used to write a few lines, on my own, describing a particular situation ���and it would be really strange how often I would stumble upon very similar lines in a letter written by Nargis. I think a lot of biographers experience this. It is a very intense experience.���
Mushtaq Shiekh on Shah Rukh Khan
���I ended up finding some Shah Rukhs and losing some���
���I wanted to tell the world that real success didn���t come easy to Shah Rukh. There���s a lot more that went into the making of Mannat. But what astonished me about him is how deeply he felt about his family. I���ve seen him fly different continents to be with them. He���s transformed from a reckless guy to someone who deals with life cautiously. He told me, ���When you have children, your perspective of life changes. You see life through them.��� The challenge was to present his life as honestly as possible. I ended up finding some Shah Rukhs and wound up also losing some Shah Rukhs. SRK was a friend and so it made the situation at my home different. They knew the man as a friend and not ��as a subject of a ��biography. So they understood my long absences into the world of SRK.���
Madhu Jain on The Kapoors
���Sharing a meal with the Kapoors helped break the ice���
���The Kapoors are larger than life. I was lucky enough to have met and become friends with Shashi Kapoor. The living room in his apartment on Atlas Road had many blown-up photographs of Prithviraj Kapoor. Shashi Kapoor talked a great deal about ���Papaji���, and quite a bit about Raj Kapoor. If Raj Kapoor had a tough time measuring up to a demanding father, Shammi Kapoor had an even tougher time. As for Rishi Kapoor, being his father���s screen alter ego wasn���t easy.
��Playing detective also helps in researching biographies. You eat, sleep and dream the subject. The Kapoors, alive or dead, became a part of my life. With the Kapoors, breaking bread, sharing a meal, can go a long way towards getting them to let down their guard. Often, I would just hang around RK Studio and sit drinking endless cups of tea in Randhir or Rishi Kapoor���s office. I also made sure that I would be invited into their homes, where they would answer your questions in earnestness.
Ranbir Kapoor was surprisingly a wonderful source. He is, as he so aptly put it, ���an old soul in a young body���. He was very open about even the darker side of the Kapoors, his father���s temper, troubles at home.���
Bhawana Somaaya on Amitabh Bachchan And Hema Malini
���Amitabh submitted whole-heartedly���
Amitabh Bachchan was initially taken aback by the concept of his biography, but once he reflected upon it, and gave his consent, he submitted whole-heartedly. He was non-interfering. He read the entire manuscript, but never requested me to change a single line or word.���
���I had a chequered relationship with Hema, but she had the confidence in me to tell the truth���
���I���d done many interviews with Hema Malini in the past, but it was always a chequered relationship. So, I was surprised when she chose me to write on her life. She wanted to tell the truth. I discovered that she was deeply spiritual, childlike and disarmingly honest. She may have been the dream girl of show business, but her first love remained dancing. When Esha Deol read the book, she wept saying, ���Imagine, I didn���t know mom had to go through so much, I wasn���t there for her.��� My job was to draw my subjects into a conversation, making them share their thoughts.���
Jyoti Sabharwal on Vyjayantimala
���Vyjayantimala stayed unfazed when her life story created a furore���
���Vyjayntimala���s memoir would have never happened if I���d taken her ���no��� for an answer. When I first went to Chennai and stayed with her, she didn���t feel comfortable about a lot of ���unpleasant truths��� tumbling out. Whether it was her maternal grandmother being ill-treated by her grandfather, her mother���s infidelity, a traumatic childhood with all those salacious rumours about her being the daughter of the Maharaja of Mysore, being labelled a home-breaker and above all, her alleged romantic liaison with Raj Kapoor during the shoot of the magnum opus, Sangam. Vyjayntimala agreed after a few months. When she denied her affair with Raj Kapoor, the great publicist, who ���would go to any length to promote his film,��� she apprehended during that part of the interview that she would be ���accused of lying���. The most delightful part was that Vyjayantimala stayed unfazed when her life story created a furore.���
Gayatri Srikanth on Rajnikanth
���Rajni���s best friend���s a driver and he sleeps on his cot���
���Rajnikant was a huge challenge. He���s not an easy subject. I���m an eye surgeon, but happened to be one of his biggest fans. I wanted to tell the world his rags-to-riches story. I took permission from Lata Rajnikant, his wife and began to chronicle his life. I went to Bangalore, where he had been a simple bus conductor. In his youth, he was really wild. Then he turned a spiritualist. Initially, he was reluctant to meet me. Finally however, he came around. He admitted how his marriage went through a troubled phase. He didn���t want to hide anything. He spoke of the time he had a nervous breakdown too. In his young days, a girl rejected him because he was ���too dark���. His best friend is a driver, and Rajnikant still sleeps on his cot. Strangely, my husband never got bored listening to my stories. I felt a vacuum when the Rajnikant episode of my life ended.���