Counting My Blessings

For eighteen years, B.K. Karanjia held the most glamorous job in India. The job: Editor of Filmfare, a magazine devoted to the starry world of Indian cinema, a distractingly beautiful, irresistibly beguiling setting to millions of people. In Counting My Blessings, Karanjia takes us behind the dancing images onscreen to this world, part fantasy, part heartbreaking reality. But first, there is an equally fascinating story that precedes this one, his own. His father was a doctor, his mother a music lover and ardent Napoleon fan. Bright as a student, he entered into a fairy tale romance with Abad, who would become his wife, cleared the ICS examinations and seemed all set for a life lived happily ever after. Instead he decided the job of a bureaucrat was not for him, and chose, in a somewhat Napoleonic vein, the harder one of film journalism, publishing a magazine that left him moneyless. The magazine closed down, but the association with the film world continued with other magazines, and with film bodies such as the Film Finance Corporation, and he provides an incisive analysis of a host of issues connected with the industry in the memoir. He also recounts his efforts to encourage the new cinema movement, which brought stature to an industry known for size more than quality. Enlivening the narrative are his warm portraits of his family itself and mentors, friends and colleagues, including a smattering of the famous, Sohrab Modi, Motilal, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala among them. Sometimes provocative, always honest, Counting My Blessings is an entertaining account of a memorable life.