@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 1:38

In Conversation with Author, Columnist & Celebrity Biographer Yasser Usman.

article image placeholderUploaded by @Ramya
Welcome to swell. It's great to have you with us today. Through your books, you've managed to uncover the extraordinary lives of celebrities and the toll fame can take on the emotional and mental health of stars who are constantly subject to media and public case. But I'm very curious. May I ask what made you focus on this particular niche of celebrity biography?

#askanauthor #authorinterview #celebrity #biography #bollywood

@AuthorYasser
Usman Usman
@AuthorYasser · 4:56
These were the stories I was invested in and I was particularly interested in telling. So as a TV journalist, when I was covering Rajesh Kana's funeral, when he passed away, I realized it's a great story. And despite not being a fan of Rajesh Kana because Rajesh Kana was before my childhood, before even I was born, his stardom was before that. So I wasn't really a fan. But the story completely fascinated me. And that's where my writing journey started
1
@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:50

Q2. Challenges in biographical writing

I think one of the challenges in biographical writing is evoking a sense of the person behind the life, the person who experienced the triumphs and the disappointments, the joys and the heartbreaks. So the writing needs to be alive with personality. Also, there are numerous obstacles to navigate, including competing biographies and documentaries, the availability of primary sources, and the ethics of revealing private information
@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:36

Q3. How do you bring out interesting angles in your writing?

Also, my next question to you is this people seem to have an insatiable appetite for famous personalities. But if you see the very thing that makes celebrity life story so popular, that is, the visibility of the celebrity can also make writing these stories really difficult because so much is already out there in the public domain. So how do you structure your books in such a way that there's always some interesting new angle about the celebrity's life that you bring out through your writing?
@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:19

Q4. Which one of your books has been the most challenging one to write?

I think I'll leave you with one final question. Of all the celebrity biographies that you've written so far, which one has been the most challenging? And if I may ask any interesting anecdotes about writing it that you could share with us today?
@AuthorYasser
Usman Usman
@AuthorYasser · 4:54

@Ramya

It requires so many perspectives, not just the subject's perspective, not just rekhas or Rajesh Kana or Sanjay Dator. Guru's perspective, but also the perspective of people who were important to their lives personally or professionally as well as the era of the different decades of the film industry and society and popular culture in general in those times
1
@AuthorYasser
Usman Usman
@AuthorYasser · 4:40

@Ramya

Everything went wrong with her over the years and the initial one decade of her life. Yet she persisted and yet she struggled and came out as a winner. It is such an inspiring story. So I think during my research, I would say the foremost challenge is to gain access to archives and segregate the wheat and chaff. I have attempted to tackle all the divergent facts and opinions about these subjects in a manner that I hope pieces together a balanced, coherent story in all its three dimensional capacity
1
@AuthorYasser
Usman Usman
@AuthorYasser · 5:00

@Ramya

No one has ever written about this handicap, that Guru that never gave an interview so to know his mind, to know him has to be the process has to be through the perspective of other people. So this is an entirely, entirely different take. What was Gita Duth's view on him? What was Gurudat's friend's view on Guru? And there are different perspectives, but the only perspective that is missing is your subject, about whom your biography is all about
1
Swell user mugshot
0:000:00