OPENING SCENES
In one of the more engaging chapters of this book about Bombay’s “cine-ecology”, Debashree Mukherjee examines the larger significance of the hunger strike by the actress Shanta Apte against Prabhat Studios, Poona, in 1939. Part of what Apte was protesting was the de-humanisation of the cine workers, treated as no different is the chapter title and, in a recent promotional event, Mukherjee mentioned two key words that help denote how film work is different from other kinds of work: exhaustion and waiting. Waiting to be called, waiting for lighting, waiting outside a vanity room.
