Magic of movies inspires blogger to write a book

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Diptakirti Chaudhuri

Diptakirti Chaudhuri, salesman by day, writer by night, as he loves to call himself, has come up with the ultimate Bible of Bollywood, packed with completely useless Hindi film trivia. He has put together 50 lists and 500 nuggets of trivia in Kitnay Aadmi Thay, where the information spans the last six decades of Hindi cinema to the present.

His mother has always been and still is an incorrigible Bollywood buff, says the Calcutta boy. He grew up discussing movies at the dinner table. As a kid, he would finish off homework early so he could accompany his mother to watch films on television.
“Calcutta is the best place in the world to be a film buff. Not only did I get to see films from all over the world, I also had many perceptive people to discuss them with. So I watched indiscriminately, everything from Kurosawa to Kanti Shah, from Charulata to Charas,” he says.
Chaudhari went to Jadavpur University and studied to be an engineer and later got an MBA degree. But he spent more time watching movies than in the classroom, did a lot of quizzing, read books by the ton and followed theatre. “I am now a ‘salesman’ and have been selling soaps, soft drinks, hair oils, newspapers for many years now,” he chuckles.
He started amassing nuggets, trivia from the film world quite early and had no clue what to do with the heaps of information. “When I was working as a sales trainee, I used to write about my ‘adventures’ and email to my friends. One of them suggested that I should start a blog and put my writings there. That’s how Calcutta Chromosome started in the year 2005.” 
Chaudhari wrote about things that he loved. Bollywood trivia was one of them. Later in 2010, Puffin commissioned him to do a book on the cricket World Cup.
“I met a dear friend in May 2010 and since he is a cricket fan, I proudly told him about the book. I expected to hear great words of encouragement, instead, he asked me ‘Why are you not writing a Bollywood book? I am looking forward to one written by you.’ That got me thinking. And I came up with the idea of a Bollywood book that is neither serious theory nor very basic. I figured that there is a ‘market’ for this kind of topic.”
A big fan of Aradhana, Chaudhari wants to do a remake of the film with Vidya Balan and Ranbir Kapoor. He even dreams of remaking Notting Hill with Kareena Kapoor and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
“But most of all, I want Salim-Javed to get together for a script based on To Kill A Mockingbird — which will star Amitabh Bachchan as Atticus Finch.”  
Unsurprisingly, he loves Bengali cinema as much as he loves its Hindi counterpart. He adds, “Who says Bengali cinema and Bollywood are separate? I learnt to appreciate cinema because of Satyajit Ray. Besides him, there are several brilliant filmmakers in Bengali starting from Ritwik Ghatak to contemporary ones like Rituparno Ghosh and Sreejit Mukherjee. We started with Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee and have continued with Dibakar Banerjee, Shoojit Sircar, Anurag Basu. Interestingly, Bollywood is Bengali cinema too!”
His next book will be a sequel to Kitnay Aadmi Thay – fifty more lists, more trivia, more jokes, more fun!