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Tilak Rishi
I was born in Lahore as the youngest sibling in a large well-off family of Punjab, where father, the sole provider, worked as the chief representative of Oxford University Press, London. I had just...view moreI was born in Lahore as the youngest sibling in a large well-off family of Punjab, where father, the sole provider, worked as the chief representative of Oxford University Press, London. I had just finished high school, winning merit scholarship from Punjab University, scoring very high marks when the family was forced to leave Lahore, which became a part of Pakistan after India’s partition in 1947. The family moved to New Delhi to start from scratch, where after graduating with very high grades in law and MBA from Delhi University, I started my career as a corporate executive with Godrej, one of the most reputed companies in India, then the biggest manufacturers of bank lockers, steel cupboards, and furniture. After working there for the first twenty years of my corporate career, I moved on to avail better opportunities in other big companies, taking retirement after a well-rewarded service of over forty years in the corporate sector of India. In the postretirement period, I worked for a while as deputy director (publications) with Institute of Marketing and Management, New Delhi. Side by side, I passionately pursued my hobby for writing and remained a regular contributor to newspapers in India and later in USA. My “Letters to the Editor” in the Hindustan Times, New Delhi, and San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, received great respect, as these were invariably published under three to four column headlines or placed prominently in a box. I moved to the United States in the ’90s along with my wife, Inderjeet, former principal of senior secondary government girls’ school in Delhi, to be with our only son Alok, settled here as a prominent software engineer in Silicon Valley.
In the United States, I took to what I wanted to do all my life, writing a book. Many true happenings and characters I came across in life, including interaction with former US president, Bill Clinton, inspired my first book, Paradise Lost and Found, published in the USA. It’s a family saga that starts from Kashmir when this paradise on earth is lost for the tourists who thronged in thousands every year to enjoy its scenic splendor. Terrorists turned it into one of the most dangerous places on the planet. The family is not only a witness to the loss of this paradise, but also to another tragedy of much bigger magnitude. In the aftermath of the partition of India, along with millions uprooted from their homes in Pakistan, the family is forced to leave behind all that it had in Lahore. Starting from a scratch on the difficult path to progress, it still has many joyful moments when along the way it tries to make a difference in many a life. The survival to success story climaxes in California where the family finds a substitute for the paradise that was lost in Kashmir.
As a big movie buff who grew up with Hindi cinema, I have combined my personal knowledge and research on the subject to complete work on my second book, Bless You Bollywood—a tribute to Hindi cinema's one hundred years of excellence in the entertainment. I cherish great memories of Bollywood’s bygone era of ’30s and ’40s, the golden age of ’50s and ’60s, the period of the parallel cinema in ’70s and ’80s, and Bollywood’s grand entry into the new millennium with movies popular worldwide. Spanning a wide range of decades, genres, and style, the Bollywood film culture in all its glory is a wonderful thing. Of the hundreds of great hits it has given, some have attained an aura of unparalleled respectability because, overtime, they continue to draw viewers in multitudes for weeks, months, and even years. My book on Bollywood is an endeavor to pay my tributes to the tallest among movie makers, artistes, composers, lyricists, singers, and scriptwriters down the decades, for contributing their extraordinary caliber to Hindi Cinema’s one hundred years of excellence in entertainment.view less
Books by Tilak Rishi
Bless You Bollywood!: A Tribute to Hindi Cinema on Completing 100 Years