Bad Men: Bollywood’s Iconic Villains

Did you know that ‘Lion’ Ajit did not care for the ‘Lily don’t be silly’ jokes or that Simran’s Baujiin <i>DDLJ</i> was modelled on an old lion? What did Manoj Kumar tell Pran that convinced him to accept Shaheed?<br><br>Who was the strange woman who called Tanuja Chandra and changed her mind about castingAshutosh Rana as Lajja Shankar Pandey in <i>Sangharsh</i>? <br><br>Why did a fresh-faced Danny Denzongpa insist on playing the much-older wheelchair-bound Thakurin <i>Dhund</i> and how did he make him unforgettable? <br><br>For decades Bollywood’s <i>khalnayaks</i> have terrorized us tormented us and trapped us in their dark universe. Yet we are still mesmerized by them. <br><br>So it may interest you to know that for a long time Gulshan Grover’s siblings would watch his filmsfirst so his mother could be whisked away from the auditorium just before he tore off a woman’sclothes on screen or was beaten black and blue. <br><br>Or that after <i>Sadak</i>’s release Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s daughters were asked ‘Does your father clap his hands like Maharani?’ <br><br>This book is an attempt to not just decode the blackguards of Hindi cinema but also understandthe men behind the monsters through the author’s personal interactions with the actors as well asconversations with their family friends and colleagues. <br><br>Full of interesting anecdotes about iconic films performances and dialogues it proves that evenBad Men can make for a good read.