It must be the most delusory media romp into Bollywood’s Serial Superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s phantom life. And, who is Jessica Hines? AB’s Trophy Geek, Giggling Gatecrasher, Room Service Mate or what? All of them except Big B’s Biographer. As we trip into page after page, lurch from hotels and sets, city to country, it’s an unfazed Hines who carries on despite the elusive interview that never comes from AB, except that he agrees to meet her in all the places, keeps his date, but there’s mysteriously no conversation, we are offered none.

So, in this chase, well, actually meetings, Hines mostly comes up against a glass wall, AB is moody, broody, droopy, gloomy, but is always at his gentlemanly best when he promises to be “cooperative and supportive” the next time, and invites her to the set, city, hotel, home he will soon be. And, Amitabh, Hines says, has always made good his promises. And what do we get as AB indulges his own Personal Academic (the new Bollywood accessory as Hines very honestly admits as the real reason for AB’s interest)? The same hokum about Mumbai’s diamond and dust life, creamy Berry Biryani at Britannia, the act of creation and insanity in the makeshift studios of Film City, girl talk with new friend Manisha Koirala, mosquitoes, yoga, drifting, apart from the Accident (in 1982, AB had a near-fatal accident which had the whole country grieving and praying, ho-hum), meetings with AB’s colleagues, directors and co-stars, and the only quote you get from AB “Things are really going crazy, am still working out when we could do the interviews.”

... contd.