Status Updates From Gulzar's Ijaazat: Insights ...

Bagging Rekha No Less To Speak About Her Role Of Sudha In Ijaazat For Her Book Is Not Just Any Minor Achievement But A Major Highlight For Mira Hashmi And I Would Like To Leave Majority Credit In Her Lap Thus Making The In-depth Interview Of Naseeruddin Shah As Mahendra And Valuable Insights From Anuradha Patel As Maya A Much Welcome Treat But In The End The Real Feast Comes From Rekha.

What Is Indeed Truly The Plum On The Pudding Is That She Actually Got To Interview Rekha No Less Even If The Quirky Star Refused To Allow A Recording Thus Forcing Meera Hashmi To Take Long Hand Notes Of The Entire Interview. I Would Hate To Suggest And Thus Downplay Her Genuine Efforts That Gulzar Alone Made This Possible.

While A Lot Of Books Have Been Penned On Gulzar The Poet And A Few On The Making Of His Films Many Of Them Being Classics In Their Own Rights Where Mira Hashmi Seems To Pull Back Is That There Are Too Many Previews On His Background And How He Evolved Into The Stature He Commands In The Film Industry But All That Precious Space Could Have Exclusively Been Devoted To The Behind The Scenes Making Of Ijaazat.

What Makes This Book Even More Plausible Is That Mira Hashmi Belongs To That Era When Hindi Films & Film Magazines Were Banned Between 1965-2007 And Were Thus Clandestinely Rerouted In To Meet The Demands That Arose Amongst Film Lovers. In This Scenario Mira Hashmi Taking Up This Assignment Is Not Just Praiseworthy But Also A Herculean Task That She Actually Brought Alive With This Book.

Right From The Very Preface The Reader Gets Hooked To This Book More Than Anything Else Than The Very Fact That The Author Mira Hashmi Hailing From Pakistan Does Such A Neat & Almost Slick Job Offering Rare Insights Into The Making And How Ijaazat Actually Came Alive Even Though Initially There Were No Takers.