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Darlingji : The True Love Story Of Nargis and Sunil Dutt

By Kishwar Desai

 699.00 inclusive of all taxes

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About the book

In the late nineteenth century, in a small village in northern India, a thirteen-year-old Brahmin widow meets a Muslim sarangi player and elopes with him. Many years later, their daughter Jaddanbai moves to Bombay and becomes a star of the early talkies. Chateau Marine, her home on Marine Drive, is famous for its evening mehfils and for the dreams it nurtures: regular visitors include Dilip Kumar, Mehboob and Kamal Amrohi. It is also the home of Fatima, Jaddanbai’s daughter, who will set the screen ablaze as Nargis, the most accomplished actress of her time.Far removed from this world of glamour, a young boy named Balraj Dutt spends his teenage years attempting to rehabilitate himself and his family after the trauma of Partition. In 1950, at the age of twenty, he arrives in Bombay. And there his life takes an unexpected turn: he is given the lead role in a new film, and is soon on his way to becoming Sunil Dutt, the film star.Then comes the moment that transforms both their lives: on 1 March 1957, during the making of Mother India, Nargis is trapped in a circle of flames and Sunil risks his life to save her. They recuperate together, and fall in love. Nargis has been in a long but futile relationship with the mercurial Raj Kapoor, and in Sunil she finally finds an anchor. Their relationship is stormy and secretive to start with, but it survives every crisis to culminate in a quite wedding on 11 March 1958. What follows are years of togetherness, including the joys of caring three children, Sanjay, Namrata and Priya but also days of pain and heartbreak: financuial trouble, Nargis’s illness, Sanjay’s addiction to drugs.Based on the diaries and letters of Nargis, Sunil and their daughter Priya, as well as on conversations and interviews with family and friends, Darlingji – as they often addressed each other – is a probing yet affectionate biography of two extraordinary people and their love for each other. Travelling as it does from the nineteenth century to the present, the book tells the larger story of the evolution of Hindi cinema, and of a society and a nation in the throes of change.

Pages: 456

Available in: Paperback

Language: English

Kishwar Desai

Kishwar Desai is an award-winning author and playwright, who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She worked in television as an anchor and producer for more than twenty years before becoming a writer. She is the chairperson of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, which set up the world’s first Partition Museum at Town Hall, Amritsar. She also helped to instal the statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside Westminster in the UK.

Desai is the author of Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt (2007). Her novel Witness the Night won the Costa First Novel Award in the UK, in 2010, and was followed by two others: Origins of Love (2012) and Sea of Innocence (2013). The trilogy featuring Simran Singh has since been optioned for a web series.

 Desai’s first work of political non-fiction, Jallianwala Bagh: The Real Story (2018), won critical acclaim and inspired exhibitions on the massacre in India, the UK and New Zealand. She also wrote a play, Manto!, which won the TAG Omega award for Best Play in 1999. In 2019, her play Devika Rani: Goddess of the Silver Screen was successfully staged in venues across India.

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