Stretched on soft and supple grass, connecting the sparkling specks in the resplendent sky into an invisible heart, with him next to her, she knew she couldn’t get any richer.The faint scent of his cologne awakened her senses but she restrained the surge of passion. She knew it was dangerous to give in to inconvenient yearnings. She resisted the thought of […]
One Wednesday morning, as I dashed towards the elevator to leave for office, I was already too late. The elevator had just one other occupant. A short, fair and beautiful young woman with a glittering bindi. She smiled at me and I returned the favour and tried to recall where I had seen her last and then it occurred to […]
In the days before relentless marketing made stars of one-hit wonders, there were legends like Kalyanji-Anandji pioneering live concerts all over the world, scoring thousands of hit songs in over 250 films, giving breaks to lyricists like Anand Bakshi, Gulshan Bawra, Qamar Jalalabadi, Anjaan, Verma Malik and M G Hashmat, and launching the careers of […]
There is something about actor, director and veteran theatre exponent Aamir Raza Husain that reminds you of James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter. In the ornate coffee shop of one of the city’s oldest hotels, a beam of sunlight finds the Padma Shree awardee as he says, “I don’t always like the spotlight. And I […]
During the 53rd edition of the Bengaluru Ganesh Utsava, veteran singer Vani Jairam was in Bengaluru to share the stage with fellow singers P Susheela and Vijay Prakash. When we caught up with the legend hours before her performance, she was struggling to find some quiet amid the din of rehearsals. Finding quietude has not been difficult […]
We all have Rashomon realities. We may be living one story but those watching us maybe seeing something very different. The Rashomon effect of course is the offshoot of a Kurosawa classic where colliding interpretations swirl around a crime. Not hard to see why Vishal Bhardwaj would choose the same technique to tell the story […]
I walked into my first yoga class with no background in movement training or sports of any kind. It was no surprise that I couldn’t get a thing right and frankly, I was a bit disappointed! Earlier, my level of physical activity was rather limited to walking when necessary and nothing more. I have always had a petite […]
Imagine this: You’re at a party with a bunch of your friends. You’re a little buzzed. Eventually the music dies down and you all end up crashing at your friend’s house. You wake up the next morning and you know something’s not quite right. Something happened but you’re not ready to talk about it. You […]
25 years after it was released, there may be many sequels but Aashiqui (1990) still stands for something unrepeatable, though it began as an attempt to cash on the Nadeem Shravan music bank with T-Series. The film began as a narrative woven around the songs and could have gone horribly wrong. Starting with the […]
“He was chewing on his paan, slowly and thinking. Thick jets of sticky, tobacco-mixed gob was swishing in his mouth. He felt as if his teeth were grinding his thoughts and blending them with his saliva.Maybe that was why he didn’t wish to spit out the gob of chewed-up paan.’’ Muhammad Umar Memon’s translation of […]
Forty five. I just turned forty five today. That number is considered by many as exactly halfway through life. And I did stop and reflect about how I feel, having reached that milestone. It feels no different, truth be told. Life, so far, has been a very interesting journey – a very agreeable, equitable one. […]
On my 30th birthday, my husband gifted me Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth – Awakening to Your Life Purpose. This book joined the select list of books that ‘changed my life’. It is not a book you can skim through, with so many complex ideas and concepts that delve deep into the human psyche. […]