We ought to have seen it coming: ever since Bollywood and its stars more or less consumed every other industry in the country: advertising, brand endorsements, the owning of sports franchises
We ought to have seen it coming: ever since Bollywood and its stars more or less consumed every other industry in the country: advertising, brand endorsements, the owning of sports franchises, the fashion and television industries and everything else in sight, its power and hitherto unexploited talents have proven formidable.
Soha Ali Khan
Now it looks like it is the turn of the writing business. It began with a trickle: Naseeruddin Shah's elegantly written memoir, And Then One Day, proved that stars had a writing elbow. Khalid Mohamed's anthology of short stories, Faction, written by 22 leading film personalities consolidated it. Then along came Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Kapadia's daughter, Twinkle, whose dominance on the best-seller charts established that Bollywood was often more interesting when it told its own stories.
Actress Soha Ali Khan's recently launched book, The Perils of Being Moderately Famous, is a case in point. Written with delightful self-deprecating humour and considerable wit, the daughter of two well read parents, Sharmila Tagore and Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, displays an endearing flair. Describing the perils of being the sister of Saif Ali Khan and thus related to the Saifeena phenomena, she hilariously enumerates the numerous and ingenuous ways the media had attempted to elicit information about the expected Saifeena baby, in a chapter which starts with her being the centre of attention during a shopping expedition in Selfridges in London, only to be described as 'Saif Ali Khan's sister' by a gaping fan.
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Saif Ali Khan with wife Kareena Kapoor
Well, she's not the only one bearing the collateral damage of being related to celebrity. On the eve of the launch of the book, the author's sister, jewellery designer and the infinitely more private Saba Ali Khan, was seen on social media enquiring gently if there was anything at all that family members ought to know about the contents of the memoir before its launch. The perils of being related to someone moderately famous?
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