During the film festival, three books on cinema

Awara
By Gayatri Chatterjee
Penguin India
Price: Rs 275
Even today, if you journey through the regions that made up the Soviet Union or through China, you had better know the lyrics to Awara’s songs well. As Vikram Seth found out, fellow travellers are likely to demand a rendition. This examination of the film that gave India some its most haunting songs and one of its most powerful, and Chaplinesque, images of the common man is likely to please both the fan and the newcomer to Raj Kapoor’s classic. The title song, by the way, is based on the raag Bhairavi, though it has an obvious gypsy influence. And did you know that when he was young Raj Kapoor’s relatives called him Gora, after the main character in Rabindranath Tagore’s novel of the same name?

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge: The Making of a Blockbuster
By Anupama Chopra
HarperCollins
Price: Rs 200
From a classic to a blockbuster, from a then revolutionary theme to a reversal to tradition. While continuing with the fidelity to marriage customs and familial loyalty in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge added another ingredient that has been gleefully adopted by the rest of Bollywood’s big productions: the NRI. Says the writer: “No post-mortem can sufficiently explain why DDLJ still draws an audience, after so many years.” She tries nonetheless to trace the success of this celebration of the “arranged love marriage”.

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The Filmscript of Agantuk, The Stranger
Foreword by Mrinal Sen
Price: Rs 195
“I could not have made Agantuk in the days of Pather Panchali,” said Satyajit Ray. Attempts to project himself through his characters, he noted, came later. In Agantuk, a stranger comes into an everyday home and nothing’s the same again.