So you first came to India at 22, drawn by Bollywood. Why the fascination?
I actually came first at 18 for four months, to help as a social worker in Rajasthan. I returned at 22, after studying Bollywood at SOAS and studying clowning in Toronto.
Clowning, hmm?
I know, it sounds wacky, but we spend our lives trying not to be laughed at, but there’s strength in humour, in the fool. The Fools are the ones who know more than the others.
So you played Fool to the Big B? That’s tough considering he has the reputation of taking himself so seriously...
(laughs) He knows that anything he says will get splashed across the front pages, so he takes the press very seriously. He doesn’t want to be misinterpreted. I was the Fool, in the sense that I was able to see the industry as an outsider and I wasn’t afraid to laugh at it. He would often say, "What are you laughing at?" and when I told him, he couldn’t always understand why it was so funny.
He stopped talking to you after your first draft of the book. What was that about?
He stopped talking to me for a year because he wasn’t happy with me basing my biography so much on his father’s autobiography. But you know, if you fall out with someone and then become friends again, it adds something to your friendship. It’s all part of the process. And he phoned me and apologized one day, all of a sudden, and that was very big of him.
So this is the unauthorized biography...
Yes, but it’s more revealing than a biography would have been. He wasn’t happy with the traditional biography because he wanted to keep his family out of the public eye. As he sees it, they are not fair game for the press. So instead, I wrote about my journey of getting to know him.
Is that less problematic as a form than the conventional biography?
Well, yes, because biographers have a tendency to be quite brutal in terms of wanting full access. They have the fantasy of objective truth, but all biographies are subjective, based on facts chosen by the biographer. Julian Barnes, who wroteFlaubert’s Parrot, once said that writing a biography is like casting a net, you may catch a few fish but you lose the water, the life of it all.
So this is your subjective truth?
I don’t know enough, I’m never going to know enough. It’s really me, my take as an individual. There is my own ego in this, allow me that.
So how does a young 22-year-old get access to the greatest actor Bollywood has produced? Did being a foreigner help?
What helped is that I started out as an academic at a time when there wasn’t much academic work on Indian cinema. He found my interest quite amusing.
What makes you so special, such an authority on Bollywood?
I did work very hard to understand this industry for 10 years. I’ve put in my time.
So did you figure out what the essence of Amitabh Bachchan is?
Like all great stars, he can be whatever he wants to be. It’s very one-on-one for those who know him. For me, he was a mentor, a second father figure. My realfather is a poet living on a cliff in Cornwall, and this is my second father.
What about his rivalry with Shah Rukh?
The press has been gagging for them to have such a rivalry for years. But I think they work in harmony, in entirely different spheres.
Did you get to know Aamir Khan as well? Everyone knows you as his paramour by whom you had a love child …
I won’t talk about that, because it’s his private life people want to know about, not mine, and I can’t share details on that, sorry.
Has your son, Jaan, been to India?
He’s 3 1/2 years old and he’s with me now. We went to Elephanta by boat and he fed the monkeys, he loved it all although he found the caves scary.
Has a world of opportunity opened up for you after this book?
No, no such world of opportunity. I want to say, "Buy this book, it will change your life," but the truth is,it will change mine. There’s this diamond ring I’ve seen in the hotel shop …
What next? More books on Bollywood?
No, believe it or not, I’m writing a book on quantum physics next.
And let me guess, yours is the outsider’s take again?
Of course (she laughs), it’s going to be funny.
If you could get a dream role in Bollywood, what would it be?
One of those perplexed goris in a train in Switzerland where the hero and the heroine are hanging off train windows. I’m the eternally perplexed gori.
The print magazine carried 10 Questions. The rest are web-extra!
