Celluloid thermonuclear device

The word "life" in the subtitle of Jerry Pinto's marvellously readable new book is misleading, notwithstanding the fact that Helen in her heyday did indeed infuse life into dozens of otherwise vapid films. As Pinto himself makes clear early on, this isn't a biographical work. He never even managed to speak with his subject, though he tried (and one suspects he may have been relieved that he didn't succeed). What this book is, is a well-researched study of a distinct personality who danced, vamped and charmed her way through more than three decades and over 500 films (Helen herself claimed the figure was closer to 1,000!), in the process telling us a lot about the way Bollywood operated during that period.

Pinto deals with Helen's early life and background in only the most cursory way, setting down basic information that has already been recorded elsewhere: how, as a child, she trekked from Burma to Assam with her (half-Spanish, half-Burmese) mother Marlene at the height of the Second World War; their moving to Bombay in 1947 and her gradual initiation into the world of Hindi cinema through Marlene's contacts; the years of struggle that led to her first hit song-and-dance number in Baarish (1957), with male dancers falling on their backs, "their limbs waving feebly in the air like so many cockroaches", entirely under her control""an image that could easily represent much of her subsequent career as a dancer/seductress.

But after giving us the backbone of the story, he adopts a much more freewheeling approach, and the bulk of the book takes the shape of synopses of (and commentary on) dozens of films featuring Helen. During her heyday, her principal function was to represent the supposed depravity of the Anglo- Indian/Catholic/westernised woman ""she served as a contrast to the chaste heroine and, on occasion, as a marker of the hero's descent into vice. But within this broad role, there were other roles she performed (as White Goddess, as Moll, as Skeleton in the Closet, even as Second Lead being wooed by the bumbling comedian), and the author illuminates them all in the most practical way possible: by turning to the movies themselves.

Even independently of what they tell us about Helen's career, the film synopses are worth the price of admission. They are brilliantly tongue-in-cheek and make for an entertaining journey down memory lane for the movie buff. They are also reminders of how shamelessly, cheerfully racist (and sexist) Hindi cinema has been over the decades. Some of the specifics are quite shocking if you don't have a strong memory of films from the 1960s and 1970s. As Pinto notes:

"Contrasting the white woman and the black or tribal man was a way of maintaining an ambiguity about the lust lives of Indians... Indians could be seen as representing a civilised mid-point between the lust of primitives and the degenerate liberation of white people."

Pinto demonstrates why Hindi cinema needed a Helen figure to validate its beliefs and principles ("she almost always failed, which was perhaps the secret of her success. In failing she kept the moral universe intact"). However, he never really attempts an understanding of why this particular performer was so successful for so long, while many other wannabe vamps fell by the wayside. This is perhaps inevitable, for beyond a point star quality is analysis-resistant. It's possible to say that Helen had an expressive face, that her abhinaya was more deeply felt than that of most other dancers. It's possible to point out also that she somehow managed to do the silliest things in the most tasteless contexts without coming across as vulgar herself. But it isn't possible to precisely define how all this adds up to make one of Hindi cinema's most enduring screen personae. That secret must remain hidden between the performer and the audience.

Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb is a fine examination of Helen's screen persona and the role she played in the peculiar moral world defined by Bollywood. But it is also a very personal work, reading in places almost like a movie-buff's private journal. It isn't too concerned with making definite arguments or belabouring a point; instead it's conversational, and fuelled entirely by the author's passion for his subject. Throughout, the writing conveys Pinto's enthusiasm for Hindi movies of the past, familiar to those of us who have read his columns and articles. You feel like you're part of an intense coffee-shop conversation. About Bollywood Gold.

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HELEN
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN H-BOMB

Jerry Pinto
Penguin Books India
Price: Rs 275; Pages: 256