Helen : The Life and Times of A Bollywood H-Bomb

It is now over two decades since the Hindi-film heroine drove the vamp into extinction, and even longer since the silver screen was ignited by the true Bollywood version of a cabaret. Yet, Helen nicknamed H-Bomb at the height of her career continues to rule the popular imagination. Improbably, for a dancer and a vamp she has become an icon. Jerry Pinto s gloriously readable book is a study of the phenomenon that was Helen: Why did a refugee of French-Burmese parentage succeed as wildly as she did in mainstream Indian cinema? How could otherwise conservative families sit through, and even enjoy, her cabarets ? What made Helen the desire that you need not be embarrassed about feeling ? How did she manage the unimaginable: vamp three generations of men on screen? Equally, the book is a brilliantly witty and provocative examination of middle-class Indian morality; the politics of religion, gender and sexuality in popular culture; and the importance of the song, the item number and the wayward woman in Hindi cinema.