Naseeruddin Shah

"No one ever passes a mirror without glancing into it."

Through out Naseeruddin Shah's autobiography, one thing among many other high points that hold your attention is the actor / author's honesty in bringing out his life on paper. Somewhere in the book he stops divulging further on the events at hand, out of respect for privacy of other individuals involved.

The books covers this brilliant actor's childhood, the way his attraction towards movies shaped up, his equation with his parents, brothers and maternal and paternal uncles, his long and fulfilling relationship with theater, his days at National School of Drama and then at Film & Television Institute of India and then through his journey in film industry and on the way his adventurous love life.

'And The One Day' is a beautiful book that takes you through the ups and downs of life of one of the most talented actors we have in India today. Readers who are Naseer saahab's fans will enjoy it for sure but there is nothing that readers who are not his fans won't be able to enjoy. Because the book is not just about an actor and his roles but about a person who plays them.… (mais)

How inordinately tough it must be to live your life as a public figure and then relive it all again in a confession - and in writing no less! It is amazing how much of it he remembers in such vivid detail. And of course, he could always be trusted to say it like it is - without hypocrisy, and fearlessly upfront.

It is all in here - from his childhood, boarding school, to his days at the NSD and FTII, the theater he did - there is a lot of that, marijuana, LSD, women and of course he documents his Benegal phase and success with "parallel" / "arthouse" cinema and his balancing act with Bollywood.

He writes like he does his interviews... and although he opens with "all that David Copperfield kinda crap", ostensibly in an effort to get it over with, he continues in that vein - quite the story teller, and humorous to boot. He uses long-winded sentences - and has some of these stock phrases that he uses a lot of - like he "cares not a whit" too often, and "gives a wide berth" to things he does not like, and he has got the "blas�� flier act down" more than once in the book. You'd have thought they would have caught that in editing.

But I nitpick. The book is all very engaging. Made me revisit some of 'em movies all over again. Read. If you are a sucker for nostalgia, success apr��s le struggle stories, and films from the 70s/80s.… (mais)