Critics' Choice: 'Sach Kahun Toh' is honest, and not selectively so

I am so glad Neena Gupta sent me her autobiography Sach Kahun Toh. I had no intention of reading it. I had given up on star-biographies. Bollywood actors lie through their teeth. Some of them can’t even tell the difference between a truth and a lie.

Many of them have conveniently chosen to forget scandalous incidents from the past. I wonder whom they see when they look in the mirror. I remember once I made bold to ask an actor about his much talked-about relationship with an actress.

He had dismissed it as “nonsense, a figment of the media’s imagination…you know how the media is. Who would know better?”

So convincing was his act of repudiation that I began to question the veracity of the rumours that we had been hearing for years and years. But then the actress whom he was supposedly involved with, would call me up and whisper about the time and content of my conversations with the actor. How would she know about them?

Actors (and I include actresses in this group) are too vain to write honestly about their lives. They fabricate their own version of the truth. The worst example of such (anything but sach) delusional confessional was the super-iconic Vyjanthimala, who denied having anything to do with Raj Kapoor during the time they shot Sangam together.

Never one to mince words, Rishi Kapoor pounced on the lie and refuted the actress’ claim.

“Who wants to face such an embarrassing situation? I gave up my dream of writing my life story. I didn’t want to be caught lying like Vyjanthimala,” says another legendary actress whose husband, a legend in his own right, has “forbidden” her from writing about her life, as it would expose his life and the affairs that he had with some of Indian cinema’s most beautiful actresses he worked with.

“Kuch baatein likhne ke liye nahin hoti,” this legend once told me. Right. When you have skeletons in your cupboard, better make films about fictional people. Leave honesty to lesser mortals. Ironically, Rishi Kapoor who was so forthright in person opted for selective honesty in his memoirs.

This is where Neena Gupta scores big. Sach Kahun Toh doesn’t have a single deceitful page in its spine. It is lucid and free-flowing with the memories forming no anxious queue to make themselves heard. Neena just lets her thoughts take their own course. She is neither in a hurry nor anxious to make herself heard. The more media-covered incidents in her life are written about with as much care and warmth as the family details.

The only other Bollywood personality whose life was covered as honestly as Neena’s was Shatrughan Sinha. In Anything But Khamosh by Bharathi S. Pradhan, Shatrughan Sinha spoke about his long affair with Reena Roy which nearly destroyed his relationship with his wife now, the then girlfriend.

I dare any other major actor to come forward to speak about their affair(s). Oh, wait, sorry, they never had any. It was all manufactured by the media.

Sach bolun toh, yeh bubble vaasi sach bolte hi nahin.