As Rajesh Khanna was the first Superstar and Pran the first Villian, Sanjay Baba is the first real bad boy of Indian cinema.
You can not ignore him. There has been enough written about him. I belong to a generation that has grown with him. We were in college when his first movie was released. We followed his life transparently through gossip columns and film magazine, courts and scandals and sometimes through the film, he acted in.
His life was full of complicated turns, decisions that have gone wrong, trust betrayed and love denied. Every time he has been down and people believed he was out; something made him realign himself to live.
SANJAY DUTT Biography
I am not a biography reader and definitely not interested in Bollywood biographies. However, I heard Sanjay Dutt in GoaFest last year and loved the openness with which he acknowledged how he had strayed.
He shared his pain and his mistakes. He stayed true to himself sharing parts of his life others would have hesitated even to remember. So, when I saw this book ‘Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy’ on Juggernaut books, I picked it as a good timepass.
The book is a ride through Sanjay Dutt’s life, so it is full of pain, sorrow, drugs, romance, breakups, underworld, fear, 1993 blast and enough drama. No doubt there is a movie on him releasing today. The storyline on the book is fairly linear and not opinionated. There are bits and pieces from newspapers, magazine, interviews and incidents that are entirely public. All secondary information has been intelligently sewen to give an impression of a first-hand account.
While you read the book, You live his life with him. You follow as a voyeuristic ringside audience to his life from early stages to end of the jail term. You feel like a friend in his surrounding and wish you could tap him and stop him from doing what he was indulging in.
We all love and trust Sanju Baba so much that most of us do not need to read a book on him. ‘Sanju’ the movie is also released today, and that will further unravel a part of his life and this time as an officially approved story. However, if Bollywood interests you, gossip and Sanjay Dutt intrigues you, go pick up this book on Juggernaut one beautiful afternoon and read it over a beer or cup of coffee.
Just between you and me, because I am fascinated by Rekha, that I am picking up ‘Rekha: The Untold Story’ to read one of these days.
‘Sanjay Dutt: The crazy untold story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy’ by Yasser Usman at Juggernaut Pages: 225 Price: Rs 499
Blo/39/book review/03/2018
