Bad Men: Bollywood’s Iconic Villains by Roshmila Bhattacharya [Paperback]

Did you know that ‘Lion’ Ajit did not care for the ‘Lily, don’t be silly’ jokes, or that Simran’s Bauji in DDLJ was modelled on an old lion? What did Manoj Kumar tell Pran that convinced him to accept Shaheed?

Who was the strange woman who called Tanuja Chandra and changed her mind about casting Ashutosh Rana as Lajja Shankar Pandey in Sangharsh?

Why did a fresh-faced Danny Denzongpa insist on playing the much-older, wheelchair-bound Thakur in Dhund, and how did he make him unforgettable?

For decades, Bollywood’s khalnayaks have terrorized us, tormented us, and trapped us in their dark universe. Yet, we are still mesmerized by them.

So, it may interest you to know that for a long time, Gulshan Grover’s siblings would watch his films first so his mother could be whisked away from the auditorium just before he tore off a woman’s clothes on screen or was beaten black and blue.

Or that after Sadak’s release, Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s daughters were asked ‘Does your father clap his hands like Maharani?’

This book is an attempt to not just decode the blackguards of Hindi cinema but also understand the men behind the monsters, through the author’s personal interactions with the actors as well as conversations with their family, friends and colleagues.

Full of interesting anecdotes about iconic films, performances and dialogues, it proves that even Bad Men can make for a good read.