What The Stars Say

Bollywood celebrities seem to have been bitten by a new bug – writing. but are they telling their life stories or just stories? How much is fiction and how much the truth?

- Nithya Subramanian

“Elizabeth (Taylor) is an eternal one-night stand. She is my private and personal bought mistress. And lascivious with it,” wrote the formidable Shakespearean actor of the 1950s in his memoir The Richard Burton Diaries. Whether this was a booze-soaked salacious declaration about his ex-wife Elizabeth Taylor or an observation written in sobriety, it sure had readers salivating.

Compare this to Karan Johar’s muted confession in An Unsuitable Boy, co-authored by the Hindustan Times’ journalist Poonam Saxena, “Everybody knows what my sexual orientation is. I don’t need to scream it out. If I need to spell it out, I won’t only because I live in a country where I could possibly be jailed for saying this. Which is why I Karan Johar will not say the three words that possibly everybody knows about me.” These lines may not be explosive, but it is a start to put an end to all speculation.

After brand endorsements, event performances and guest appearances, Bollywood celebrities seem to have been bitten by a new bug – writing. In the last few years, more than a dozen books have been written by them. Leading the pack is Twinkle Khanna aka Mrs Funny Bones, whose The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad has reportedly sold more than 100,000 copies. Her fans are extremely adulatory. As one reader, Mallika Oberoi, wrote online, “This book not only touches but rips open the stony part of the heart that most of us carry these days. Twinkle Khanna, you have, with such detail, weaved the intricacies of ordinary Indian lives which are huge in their own prospects.”