I have never read De, I just thought I would never read her, I would never have to, but these days I want to read something light, I don’t want to pick Thomas Hardy or that woman in moors or who writes about English moors, I just want to entertain myself with flippant affections, empty mentations and vain whims.

The woman in Red sari, with down cast eyes and cheesy jewelry caught my attention, after all it was a book cover, I had to stop and take it in my hands, it was Bollywood Nights by Shoba de!,  Madam had made a glitzy appeal to nights and stars , only if she had found a moon, it would be languid and lame!. I read mostly English Novels written by Indians

It is endearing to note their language going through this metamorphosis, like daal, samosa and pungent chutneys in glam bottles, English supplemented vanity to our roots.

Bollywood Nights was her second book after Starry nights? I am not sure but I think I sat there for a while turning the pages and reading morsels and mouthfuls of the same, when I was done I felt strangely spent and I felt a sense of freedom that couldn’t be described in words, as if I wanted to

Collar each mard and call him fuck fuck, fuck! Until, he became tantamount with the world, until he became the word, and was worn out by the usage.

The novel narrated the story of a fifteen-year-old girl who came from Madras with her Amma

As a pimp, and was swallowed in to the world of films to rise again as a queen of hearts.

The gist of the story is how a young lass called Viji , with a 40 inch bust made it to filmdom

Of course with the help of pimp or pimps in the industry, it is a salacious saga of men of all sizes, married or single fucking Asharani as if she is just a bust and nothing beyond, and eventually bringing her to stardom and loneliness. Asharani ‘s love, lust everything justified in the tardiness of

Show business.

Some excerpts:

Rita crooned” men like variety, we women put up with that, most women hate their husbands, it’s a fact. They hate marriage. That’s a fact.But what else they could do? What is the choice? The only way to make marriage work is through sex-and most women hate that too. But the day a man feels that his woman has lost interest in sex there for interest in him, the relationship is finished and he starts looking elsewhere. We have to pretend, all of us pretend, just shut your eyes and part your legs”

The novel is raunchy, exotic but hard hitting where it hurts, Shoba de doesn’t leave anything to the mind's eye, every act of deceit and farce picked up and threaded in to the story, it becomes a

Mind blowing , bold narrative of pathetic humans. If anyone thought this surreal they would be fed with notoriously raw, brutal, basic instincts of survival…

Bollywood Nights has noxious litter of Hindi words; they are deleterious by accent not by import .

The main protagonist Asharani , has missed the basic education to be decent Iyyangari girl, she is fat and dark , ugly by popular demand, this doesn’t deter the barters of flesh in the bollywood melee, she gets pimped from one producer to the other, one macho dick to the other, one sham to

The other, to raise her family, her amma. It never occurs to her to say nay, she is god fearing and

South Indian, mostly docile and falls in to a routine of casting couch. Later when she sincerely falls in love with Akshay, she realizes the futility of it, she mends her ways to stay in the industry and make kings happy. After all when it is a matter of survival there is no place for dignity, a clever woman who did not rebel but learned the nuances of using the ropes. Sadly for Asha Rani, life remains a mirage; is  it her fate or her conditioning that makes her vulnerable ? but she comes across real and naïve, beautiful and conniving at the same time.

So I recommend this book to all puritans who boast high morals and loose libido.