HT Picks; New Reads
Hindustan TimesOf status, desire and agency The reading list this week includes a new book from a winner of the Man Booker prize, a young Wendy Doniger’s letters home and her recollections of her year in 1960s India, and a reissued biography of Ashok Kumar. Despite the director’s reservations, he was cast in the lead role opposite Devika Rani in the 1936 film Jeevan Naiyya when the original hero went missing. But as Nabendu Ghosh writes, Ashok Kumar’s world was much larger — he was also a charming conversationalist, mentor, homeopath, astrologer, painter, linguist, limericist and, above all, loyal friend and devoted husband and father. This book is also a mini-history of the early decades of Bombay’s Hindustani cinema, and its pages are rich with little anecdotes featuring legends like — besides Devika Rani — Saadat Hasan Manto, Sashadhar Mukherjee, Leela Chitnis, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Meena Kumari and BR Chopra.
History of this topic
Book Review | First among the equals of Old Bollywood’s heroes
Deccan Chronicle
Dadasaheb Phalke Birth Anniversary: Lesser-known Facts About The Father of Indian Cinema
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Indian cinema and the Dalit identity: The groundbreaking defiance of Nagraj Manjule's Fandry
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