(Note:   This is a story I wrote for India Abroad that appeared in the Oct. 5,  2007 issue.   There’s nothing filmi about it, though a young life suddenly cut short has been depicted often enough on screen.   But I wanted to post  this story here, in the hope that more people will learn about Navroze Mody’s life, and to counterbalance all that’s been written about  his violent  death.)

In 1987, I worked at the Argentine Embassy’s trade office in midtown Manhattan.   It was my first proper job while starting college, and it was fun.   Most of the handful of staff there were very young, and we were always laughing.

I would come in from Long Island and catch the E train at Penn Station to the stop under the Citicorp building at Lexington Avenue and 53rd street.   I often noticed an intriguing-looking young guy, in a sharp suit and aviator-frame eyeglasses – it was the Eighties – who would get on one stop after me every day.   He stood out because he was completely bald, years before it was in vogue for men to shave their heads, and I assumed he must have been undergoing cancer treatment.   He looked about 30 years old, and he was Indian.

He would occasionally be with someone he knew, chatting in a British accent.   We both got off at the same stop and headed in different directions.   I even commented to Alfredo, a co-worker, about this unusual guy I kept seeing on the subway, leading him to pester me often with ” ¿Cómo está tu hindue?   Did you speak to him today?”   I’d blush, saying “No way!   I’m not approaching some total stranger on the subway.”   And we’d leave it at that.   I never imagined that I would try to track him down 20 years later.

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Here it is, late Thursday night.   I’ve just put in a full day at the office, finished a novel I’m reviewing on the way home on the train, spoke to the author for close to an hour for the same article, made some pasta for dinner, chatted on the  phone  while The Celebrity Apprentice wrapped up in the background.   (Well played, Piers and Trace.)

And before turning in, I was in the mood for some light entertainment, some filmi song and dance.   Hey, where’s the stash I brough back from Bombay?   What will it be?   Partner or Jhoom Barabar Jhoom?   Well, I’d seen chunks of JBJ over and over on a long flight a few months ago, so I opt for  ChiChi’s fedora-clad megahit from last year.

After I unwrap  the cellophane, still bearing the Rs 399 sticker from PlanetM in downtown Bombay, where I plunked down a considerable amount of greenbacks on my last trip back, I open the silly cardboard cut-out flaps of the DVD box, and see the hot pink T-series DVD laying there.   I lift it up and – don’t ask me why – flip it over, and I don’t believe it:   the disc is SO scratched and dusty, it looks like it’s been left on the Juhu Tara  Road and driven over by rush hour traffic.

Call me optimistic (anyone who knows how long I endured  through a certain  relationship can attest to that), but, after some gentle cleaning with an appropriate dry cloth, I pop the scarred disc into the tray of my player, hoping beyond hope that it will go.

But, alas  no.  

Shame on you, PlanetM, for selling such damaged merchandise, and/or shame on T-Series for packing such crap to sell to the public.   I’ll be over to see you one of these days.

The Miami Herald reports that the KJo Dostana entourage has touched down in Florida and begun shooting:

The production is expected to have all the kitschy trappings that have made Bollywood movies such a hit worldwide, including a zany musical number to be filmed on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road.

Filmi fans will get to see a rematch of Bluffmaster jodi Roy and Simmi (AB 2.0 and Priyanka Chopra).      

In 2007, we saw Anupama Chopra’s SRK book released, which told of Khan’s bio and career trajectory, while also giving readers an intro to the Bombay film industry.

Later in the same year, Stephen Alter’s Confessions of a Bollywood Love Thief made its appearance.   (Try reading a book with that title on the subway and note the looks on the faces of fellow commuters  pondering the meaning.)

Alter’s book takes readers behind the scenes of the making of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara, while splicing in history and background information about the Hindi film industry (visits to Dev Anand, Shekar Kapur, Shyam Benegal, etc.).  

He takes us from the  birth of the concept for the film, to the music  composition, the casting, the location scouting and set-building, to the shooting, choreography and, the screening.   Along the way we –  the filmi fans –  will find many interesting  details: there was great doubt until the first scene was shot as to whether Saif would go ahead and cut his hair short, Ajay Devgan is quite hands-on when it comes to camera set-ups and cut-away shots, that was real dung Konkona Sen Sharma was making cakes out of during the scene with Kareena and Vivek, and on and on.

I wish there were more books like this, to feed our appetites for the behind-the-scenes info without falling into baseless gossip.   My only complaint  is that the non-Omkara chapters (while all interesting) don’t mesh that well with the flow of the story.   For anyone new, or not that new, to the B’wood juggernaut, those chapters are still welcome, but perhaps they would have been better suited to a separate book.

What Alter does have, in spades, is great access.   (His cousin, Tom Alter, an FTI Pune grad, has acted in over 200 Hindi movies.)     Through his eyes, we get to watch the Beedi item number being filmed for the Shakespearean hit,  the crew setting up and working their magic so we’ll find it all credible on screen, and the actors doing a line reading at the Sun-N-Sand.

Interestingly, like Chopra’s book, this one was published by an American house (Harcourt).