LEELA NAIDU BY JERRY PINTO

Leela: A Patchwork Life By Leela Naidu and Jerry Pinto. Penguin/Viking. Pages 180. Rs 450.
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The author of this book is a renowned poet and author whose book “ Helen:The Life and Times of an H-bomb fetched him the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema ”.This book was completed shortly before Leela Naidu’s death in 2009. Leela , the film actress, was Anuradha in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s film with the same name, where she plays a popular radio singer and daughter of a rich man, falls in love with an idealistic doctor, Balraj Sahni, who serves the poor in a remote village. She also starred in Merchant-Ivory’s The Householder and Shyam Benegal’s Trikaal. She made her own documentaries, dubbed Hong Kong action movies, was Ramnath Goenka’s communication manager, editor of Society and managing editor of Keynotes.
She was married to Tilak Raj Oberoi, the eldest son of M. S. Oberoi, at the young age of 17 and had twin daughters, Maya and Priya. She was divorced before she was 20. She was Dom Moraes’ wife for over 20 years before the marriage ended in a second divorce. After that, and the death of her daughter, Leela, the enigma, became reclusive.
Her life with Moraes makes for the riveting chapters in the book, the writing doused in feelings of scorn as well as fondness for her husband: “He lived under the misapprehension that anything could be improved by the addition of alcohol in good measure.”
Leela has been sketched by Salvador Dali, learned to act from Jean Renoir, hung out with Francois Truffaut and Ingrid Bergman. In the memoirs that she has written in the last five years of her life, Leela’s energy just leaps out of the pages. Pinto is obviously a "devotee" and acolyte of Leela, who seemed to have completely captivated him. The book is accurately sub-titled A Patchwork Life. It offers peeks into a life charming and chequered, with a variegated collection of interesting persons. The story about the impish Sarojini Naidu asking young Leela to meet Mickey Mouse, who turns out to be Mahatma Gandhi, is purely delightful. There are some pictures with famous men and women included in the book—Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Ferdinand Marcos, Sashi Kapoor, and references of Ismail Merchant, Ingrid Bergman, Jean Renoir, J.R.D. Tata, Ramnath Goenka, Peter Ustinov, Mother Teresa, Indira Gandhi, and Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Vikram Doctor wrote, “Naidu was one of a group of beautiful Indian women who, from the Forties to the early Sixties, helped create an idea of a beautiful, elegant and accomplished new nation.”
In a touching Epilogue Leela writes, “I write with a flurry of wishes for the book; that whoever cares to read it may smile, chuckle and laugh and then understand or feel the sadness, the pain of humanity in certain anecdotes in the historical past and the present.”

The chronicler of Leela’s life has done a fine job. The book is written with immense love, and probably with as much veracity as Leela spoke of her life. The moods and the moments are nicely captured .A passionate book written with great passion by Jerry Pinto.
P.P.Ramachandran