You Ask, I Tell

A star is born in India in this breaktaking life story of a silver screen idol forced to grow up too fast. Hansa Wadkar (born Ratan Bhalchandra) was one of Maharashtra’s best known stage and screen personalities. By the time she was married—to a much older family friend and impresario when she was just 15—she had already starred in numerous movies and was becoming a rising star. Supporting her family on her earnings, her brother sick with malaria, and both parents having taken to drink, life was not easy for the young woman. But Hansa was not only beautiful and immensely talented, she was tough, wilful, capricious and headstrong. Her autobiography, published in 1970 and translated into English here for the first time, created a sensation for its frankness and boldness.