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It is now well over three decades since the Hindi-film heroine drove the vamp
into extinction, and even longer since the silver screen was ignited by the
true Bollywood version of a cabaret. Yet, Helen-nicknamed 'H-Bomb' at the
height of her career-continues to rule the popular imagination. Improbably,
for an 'item girl'-who rarely appeared for more than five minutes in a
movie-she has become an icon.
Jerry Pinto's sparkling book is a study of the phenomenon that was Helen:
Why did a refugee of French-Burmese parentage succeed as wildly as she did
in mainstream Indian cinema? How could otherwise conservative families
sit through, and even enjoy, her cabarets? What made Helen 'the desire
that you need not be embarrassed about feeling'? How did she manage the
unimaginable: vamp three generations of men on screen?
Equally, the book is a gloriously witty and provocative examination of middleclass Indian morality; the politics of religion, gender and sexuality in popular
culture; and the importance of the song, the item number and the wayward
woman in Hindi cinema.
