What does the 'T' in T-series stand for? How many songs does India's first talkie 'Alam Ara have? In which city can one find the cinema halls Mona and Elphinston?
Answers to these and several other interesting questions can be found in a new book 'Name Place Animal Thing' by Mayank Shekhar.
The 'T' in T-series stands for Trishul; 'Alam Ala' has an astounding 52 songs while Mona and Elphinston are cinema halls in Patna.
The book, brought out by Fingerprint! Publishing, covers concerns of a young, urban India, ranging from city, cinema, stardom, and religion to cops, cigarette smoking, social drinking, and social media.
Shekhar, a journalist and television presenter, writes about people he has met, places he has visited, and other things.
Sharing another interesting trivia, he says that when 'Zanjeer' came out in 1972, the posters make no mention of its writer duo Salim-Javed.
"The writers hired a drunken painter one night, gave him some money and a stencil, and sent him off to paint their names on every billboard and poster of 'Zanjeer' in the city, from Juhu to Opera House. No filmmaker messed with them over credits after that," he writes.
According to the author, nobody could have. "The screen writers brought with them the star - Amitabh Bachchan - along with a bound script, which would be a sure-fire success."
Shekhar says the thought of the screen writer taking home as much as 25 per cent of a film's profits would be laughable now.
"But it became possible for Salim-Javed - writers whose lifestyle, fame and maverick ways often matched the superstars' in Bollywood. Their rise to the top of the film industry couldn't have been easy. Writers were rarely credited in movies, let alone paid well those days.
