Book Review | The crazy untold story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy

Book: The crazy untold story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy
Author: Yasser Usman
Publisher: Juggernaut
Pages: 225 
Price: Rs 499

A cool dude, a bhai with lots of swagger who has made some ‘mistakes’ but is just ‘human’ and has a big heart is the image many people have of Sanjay Dutt. In the introduction, Yasser Usman observes: “Sanjay was the original bad boy of Bollywood...he was the model of masculinity in the late 1980s and early 1990s...He’s been very forthcoming about his addictions...He was open about his many girlfriends and was extremely popular in small-town India. His staunchest fans were men who imitated his macho personality... Sanjay’s artlessness and naivety make people believe he’s genuinely good at heart...After every tragedy, every upheaval, Sanjay managed to make smashing comebacks. It was as if no matter what he did, no matter how serious his misdemeanours, his fans retained a soft spot for this ‘bin maa ka bachcha (motherless child)’ and were always ready to forgive him once he had expressed guilt or atoned for his mistakes.”

Forgiving Sanjay (no matter what) seems to be recurring pattern, which starts at home with mollycoddling by his mother Nargis, developing in him early on this sense of unreasonable entitlement. Tina Munim, his first girlfriend, who moved on after his drug addiction became unmanageable, also had a similar approach for long. Usman quotes an interview of Munim’s with Movie magazine, where she says, “Whatever he may do to upset you...the moment you meet him with his sorrowful, repentant behaviour, all is forgotten.”

Usman takes you through Sanjay’s life – early years, school, movies, mother’s death, girlfriends, wives, encounters with the underworld and the infamous 1993 blasts, time in jail, and the high and lows in his career through it all.
The author himself admits to being unable to ‘rationalise’ the bad boy, but the manner in which he essays Sanjay’s life gives you sufficient clues. For instance, the book not only covers Sanjay’s birth and onwards, but also devotes a chapter to Nargis and Sunil Dutt starting from their childhood and entry into films, to how they met and got married. Then there’s the purposive detailing of the Dutt household, ensuring you’re never merely reading about Sanjay, but the ripple effect of his life events on his entire family. Leave out their celebrity status and connections, and you may feel like their story could be anyone’s. Their parenting mistakes could have been anyone’s.

Any over-indulged child could land up being a self-serving individual, causing close ones and society great turmoil. The only person who foresaw Sanjay’s fate was Sunil Dutt, who sent Sanjay to boarding school, hoping to inculcate some discipline in him.

The author mostly does not reveal his own opinions but allows the story to unfold through voices of people he has interviewed – school teachers and classmates, film fraternity (including Mahesh Bhatt), and cops and inmates – as well as prison records, Nargis notes in Sanjay’s baby book, transcripts of telephonic conversations, news reports, and published interviews. For landmark movies, be it blockbusters or duds, Usman gives readers the storyline.

Stories of Sanjay’s relationships and break ups too are also told from (mostly published) interviews of both sides. What’s missing though is that while Usman manages to pull out Sanjay’s confession to Sunil Dutt about having aided in the storage of arms prior to the 1993 Bombay blasts, to which a top cop had been witness, we still don’t know whether his involvement included knowledge of the plans.

While the writing is not boast worthy, Usman peppers the book with enough anecdotes, or perhaps scoops, to keep people reading – such as how the bad boy himself was bullied for years; a shooting incident before the blast for which Sanjay had been jailed; how his visits to his ailing wife Richa, and their daughter, had become so few that Trishala once called him uncle. This is all done without the voyeuristic tone that often sensationalises the coverage of celebrities.