HOW TO WRITE AN UNAUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY OF A FILM STAR
By Anamika Chatterjee
It is anything but easy to tell the ‘untold story’ of a Bollywood star. Yasser Usman should know. A senior film journalist, he has recently penned an unauthorised biography of Sanjay Dutt, titled The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy (published by Juggernaut) after penning the life sketches of veteran actors Rajesh Khanna and Rekha. The actor, however, seems less than impressed. Recently, he issued a statement saying, among other things, that the book was “partly based on my old interviews but rest all seemed to be based on hearsay, 1990s tabloids and gossip magazines”. In a conversation with Khaleej Times, Usman stands by the “extensive research” that informs his book and, of course, why Sanjay Dutt makes for a fascinating subject!
How would you describe his relationship with his parents — actors Nargis and Sunil Dutt? Would it be incorrect to say Nargis’s death set off a chain of events in Sanjay Dutt’s life?
