Thanks must go out to the following people:
To Andrea, my sister, who slept through the crash-bang-wail of thousands of minutes of Hindi film, and listened while I agonized, theorized and complained;
To Lalitha Luke, who typed my handwritten notes;
To Harish Raghuwanshi who helped build the filmography;
To Paromita Vohra, who lent me her copy of Desperately Seeking Helen, pointed out other films and trashed the first draft;
To the staff of Video Plaza, Lamington Road, Mumbai, Mukhtarbhai and Ritu Kumar, for digging out Helen films with a great deal of enthusiasm;
To Angela Nagraj, who checked the facts and suffered through endless lists;
To Rahul Srivastava, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Naresh Fernandes, Rachel Dwyer and Sumati Nagrath who read the manuscript at different stages and offered critical comments and suggestions;
To all those who contributed their thoughts and opinions in the last chapter;
To the staff of Man’s World, who gasped at the right moments when I described Helen films, listened bemused as I hummed Helen songs off-key, and laughed obligingly when I laughed;
And to its editor and publisher, Radhakrishnan Nair, whose quiet support and empathy have helped this book in ways that cannot be explained adequately;
To Manoj Menon and Priya Nair and Dia and Kian who opened their doors so I could work on the third draft of the first few chapters;
To Niloufer Venkatraman and Andre Morris for brun pao and butter and the fresh Lonavla air of Writer’s Bloc, where I retreated to get past the third draft of the last few chapters;
To Mehlli Gobhai, at whose house I worked on draft four;
To Nasreen Munni Kabir who promised me her film on Helen and then came through with breathtaking efficiency;
To Shashi Baliga, editor, Filmfare, for permission to quote from the magazine, and from her own interview with Helen that appeared in Savvy;
To Ravi Singh, who is to blame.