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Booked in Bollywood
Ten actresses who went beyond the memoir to pen poems, children’s stories, novels, food, parenting and wellness books.
Bollywood actresses who have also authored books. / Bollywood Insider
Alia Bhatt’s puppy love
In June 2024, Alia Bhatt launched Ed Finds A Home, the first picture book in the series Adventures of Ed-e-Mamma. Brought out by Puffin Books, it revolves around a rescued pup, Ed, who is mothered by a young girl who has been named Alia after her. Like her sister Shaheen who as a kid, spoke to her furry pets in cat language, Alia too can communicate with her canine companion in a tongue of their own.
Soha Ali Khan’s doggy tales
Soha Ali Khan got on the ‘write’ track with The Perils of Being Moderately Famous in December 2017, a collection of personal essays. In April 2022, she partnered with husband Kunal Khemu for a children’s book, Inni & Bobo Find Each Other (Book 1), published by Puffin Books. Revolving around Inni modeled on their own daughter, and her adopted puppy Bobo, it grew out of one of the bedtime stories Kunal had narrated to Inaaya. Since she wanted to see pictures too, the couple decided to get it published as a book so other kids could read it too.
Twinkle Khanna’s breakaway innings
In 2001, after 15 films, Twinkle Khanna quit movies. A decade later, soon after her daughter Nitara was born, an editor-friend asked her to write a humorous column for a newspaper she had just joined. The result, Mrs Funny bones tickled everyone’s funny bones and was compiled into a book by the same name in 2015.
This was followed by a short story collection, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad. One of the stories on Arunachalam Muruganantham, the inventor of low-cost sanitary napkins, inspired her first production, Pad Man, starring husband Akshay Kumar. A novel followed and many more surely will.
Huma Qureshi’s wonder woman
Huma Qureshi debuted as an author last December with a fiction novel —Zeba: An Accidental Superhero. It packs magic, transformation, empowerment and the heroic triumph of the human spirit into 208 pages as Zeba, a spoilt, sassy, wealthy New Yorker, discovers her superpowers in a country in the Himalayas. The wonder woman then unleashes them on cruel tyrant Khan to not just save her family, but the world at large.
Kareena Kapoor Khan un-pauses pregnancy
Soon after the birth of her second son in August, 2021, the actress came up with a 392-page book titled Kareena Kopoor Khan’s Pregnancy Bible which sought to answer all the questions the self-confessed hypochondriac had asked her doctors when she was expecting her first child, Taimur, and again when pregnant with Jehangir during the Covid-19 pandemic. Co-authored by Aditi Shah Bhimjyani, this tell-all book touches on everything from morning sickness to weird cravings, nursery prepping and baby shopping, labor to breastfeeding.
Mum’s the word for Sonali Bendre
In 2015, Penguin Random House published Sonali Bendre’s The Modern Gurukul: My Experiments with Parenting which discusses all that churns in the mind of mothers in the digital age, including how many hours a child should watch TV or play on the Xbox. The book is candidly personal with the actress who became a mother at 30 talking about how she started doing push-ups in a restaurant to encourage her sedentary son to get physically active. Sonali, who runs a popular book club, says the idea for writing this book came from the pages of her tattered diary in which she meticulously journalled all her parenting experiences.
Manisha Koirala’s healing process
Penguin also brought to the book shelves Manisha Koirala’s deeply personal book, Healed: How Cancer Gave Me A New Life, which chronicles her six-year battle with late-stage ovarian cancer. With co-author Neelam Kumar, the actress bares her soul, sharing through 21 chapters not just her fears following the diagnosis when she didn’t know if she would live or die, but also her alcohol addiction, her failed romances, her IVF treatment and even her phobia that she would be abandoned.
Shilpa Shetty’s Food for thought
Another role model when it comes to fitness, Shilpa Shetty’s first book, published by Penguin Random House in November 2015, is how basic Indian cereals and locally grown pulses can be used for nutritious meals. Co-authored with international health expert and holistic nutritionist Luke Coutinho, The Great Indian Diet: Busting the Big Fat Myth, tells readers the nutritional content in different foods so they can stay light. The Diary of a Domestic Diva followed in February 2018. It offers readers 50 healthy recipes, some from the actress’s Sunday Binge videos.
Mandira Bedi’s happy space
Mandira Bedi’s book, Happy For No Reason, germinated from her own journey of self-discovery and underlines what the actress has learnt through the quest: Heaven and hell is in your head. Happiness is a choice! It advocates self-love as a way of becoming the best version of oneself and gratitude for a positive mindset.
Meena Kumari’s poems from the heart
After Meena Kumari passed away in 1972, poet-lyricist Gulzar who directed the actress in Mere Apne, got Hindi Pocket Books to publish some of the poems she left behind. Later, Roli Books released Meena Kumari The Poet: A Life Beyond Cinema which had the original poems in Urdu with English translation by Noorul Hasan, a retired professor of English who has also translated the poems of Firaq Gorakhpuri.
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