Helen: The Making of a Bollywood H-Bomb

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...