The subtitle of this beautifully produced, lavishly illustrated book is: "A Visual Journey through the Heart of Bollywood." With its comparison to the American film product ("Bollywood"), its implication of a pleasingly emotional ("heart") content, it nicely indicates not only the commercial ambitions of the ordinary Hindi film, but also the scope of this book itself.
The ordinary Hindi film is a product, built to satisfy a need, and it is fitting that the first of the 14 sections that make up this book should begin with an essay on publicity, and then move on to considerations of the posters, the production banners, how the credits emphasize content, and the songs and dances embedded within the film.
Film critic Deepa Gahlot well describes the Bollywood film. It is a popular cinema, its stories distantly inspired by epics and folk theater. It thus works only within set parameters. If there are no songs and dances, the film is considered an exception. And "in keeping with oft-repeated story lines, formulaic elements and audience expectations, characters usually fall within broad stereotypes."