Eena Meena Deeka : The Story of Hindi Film Comedy

Contents: Prologue. 1. The Salad years. 2. The Ranjit comedians. 3. The Indian Charlie. 4. Lost in the shadows. 5. The Puppet masters. 6. The Winayak Magic. 7. The reluctant comedian. 8. Play it again, Johnny!. 9. Cameos from the past. 10. Typecast in the role. 11. The Chaplin mystique. 12. The king of comedy. 13. The image manipulators. 14. The female of the species. 15. The hero as comedian. 16. The intelligent man's guide to comedy. 17. A touch of the new middle class. 18. Comedies of the new wave. 19. The world of Govinda. 20. The comic universe of the nineties. 21. The last emperor. The awards. Appendices: 1. Top 12 comedy films. 2. 10 mad characters. 3. Men in drag.

"Eena Meena Deeka is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Indian screen comedy, peopled by known, as well as once-important but now-forgotten comedians, who helped evolve the genre from its first slapstick begins to the 'polite' comedies of manners aimed at the urban middle-class. The comedian or vidushak has always been an indispensable aspect of the Indian dramatic tradition. Comedy or basya is one of the nine 'rasas' as defined in Bharatmuni's Natyashastra. It was, therefore, natural for Indian cinema to readily imbibe this aspect of the dramatic tradition, with the first Indian comedy, a single-reeler directed by Dadasaheb Phalke, making its appearance as early as 1913.

The book traces the evolution of the genre from Dhirendranath Ganguly, the first recognised 'filmmaker-comedian' who made comedies on a regular basis to the true 'godfather' of the Indian comic art Noor Mohammed 'Charlie', who, along with his contemporaries Dixit, Ghory and Kesari, set the comic pace through much of the 1930s and '40s and much of what was to follow.

The 1950s and '60s were truly the golden era of Indian film comedy -- with Johnny Walker's antics, Jagdeeps' rolling eyes, Johar's sardonic wit, Om Prakash's miserliness, Radhakrishen's shrill high-pitched comebacks, Mukri's playing-to-the gallery... the list is endless! The icing on the comic cake was, of course, Kishore Kumar who sacrificed his comic talent to emerge as a star-singer and the inimitable Mehmood whose penchant for the bitter-sweet has made him an unforgettable icon.

Though the 1970s and 80s had its comic stars in Asrani and Paintal, these were the decades when the director reigned supreme. The book takes a close look at the urban middle-class comedies of Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterji as also those of the new wave comedies by directors like Kundan Shah and Pradip Krishan. This was also when the comedian took a backseat to the leading man who was romancer-villain-comedian all rolled into one!

The hero-playing-comedian is a trend as old as cinema: Motilal, Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and finally, Amitabh Bachchan. The fading years of the century saw the emergence of the star as comedian when the hero - from Salman Khan to Sunjay Dutt to Govinda - preferred to play the fool under the direction of David Dhawan. Nonetheless, an original talent like Johnny Lever emerged as a top comedian in spite of such stiff competition.

Eena Meena Deeka takes a panoramic look at all these players, the films and their directors who made it possible for us to hold on to our sanity in this world on the brink of extinction." (jacket)