SAEED: AN ACTOR?S JOURNEY By Saeed Jaffrey, HarperCollins, Rs 395 This is not an autobiography. It is more like a schoolboyish account, with huge dollops of braggadocio thrown in. Saeed Jaffrey wants to boast ? about his libido and everything else ? but one wishes he had worked on the writing as well instead of bringing out this hamhanded effort. Or used a ghost writer. It is not that Jaffrey?s story is not interesting. It is just that it has been badly put together. There are fabulous descriptions of Mussoorie ? the Cambridge of the Himalayas where he grew up. He describes in detail the way he would sneak out of his house to be mesmerised by the likes of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy on the big screen. He was catching up with Hollywood and Hollywood was catching up with him. There is a lovely account of how he runs away to Calcutta and earns a living selling portraits. It is here that a married Anglo-Indian lady takes pity on a young Jaffrey and helps him lose his virginity. But for some reason he wants to talk about sex and the women who have fallen for him all the time. Curiously enough, he starts off with some ruminations on the lovemaking of pigeons. From then on, he ?makes glorious love for hours and hours? every few pages. But he describes his own sexual activities as ?non-voyeuristic? and ?non-lustful?. And he never lets go of an occasion to remind his readers that he might be randy as hell but he is damn talented as well. Predictably, there is not much about Madhur Jaffrey, his first wife, in the book. He refers to her as M throughout but he does admit that he was very jealous when she told him that a black actor had forcibly kissed her. By way of revenge, he goes out and beds someone. Jaffrey is in Detroit when John F. Kennedy is shot. It is a dark night and a strong gust of wind makes the poor chap very nervous. So he comforts himself by making love to Karen, his stage manager. If Jaffrey is to be believed, everyone seemed to have designs on him ? even a handsome six footer called Rick. Beautiful college girls in Bombay blew kisses at him from cars and taxis. French speaking Moroccan girls clung to him. Once Madhur moves out of his life, Jaffrey goes on a binge. He makes love to a Jewish girl and begins to think of himself as Lord Krishna. A Holi gift turns out to be another Jewish-American girl. There are some titbits on Indian food, Madhur?s influence no doubt. Jaffrey even drops the name of a German wine which goes perfectly with spicy Indian food. His encounters with Hollywood greats liven up the book. If he is to be believed, Marlon Brando was friendly with an Indian girl for some time. And later he tells us how Ingrid Bergman tried very hard to hide the cancer she was suffering from. In a moving account, he tells us how badly he wanted to act in a Satyajit Ray movie. He chanced upon Ray in a Beirut airport and told him as much. Months later, a telegram arrived from Ray saying he wanted to cast Jaffrey in Shatranj Ke Khilari. His current wife, Jennifer, apparently fell for him in Shimla and told him: ?You are the handsomest man I?ve ever seen. I?ve fallen in love. You are the man I will marry.? Jaffrey also seems to be deeply influenced by zodiac signs. He reminds his reader every now and then that he is a Capricornian. But these are only mentioned in passing. Soon enough, he has moved on to the subject he seems to specialize in ? and it is not acting.