“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 […]
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Tag: raj kapoor
Tom Alter: The Passionate Indian
Actor, author, columnist, passionate aesthete, Padma Shri Tom Alter has just arrived in the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore to deliver a lecture on ‘Sports & Arts in Modern India’. If he is tired, it doesn’t show because Tom is used to being many things all at once. Over the last few days, he has […]
How Bollywood Ceased To Be About Us
Over a decade ago, at Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, I spoke with a youthful conviction on why Hindi cinema must never be dismissed as just another drug to keep the masses oblivious to the real issues of governance, poverty, disenfranchisement, corruption and more. When gently asked by the moderator, why Hindi cinema could not be […]
All Shades Of White
Dilip Kumar was known as the Man in White, as he always wore perfectly crisp whites laundered by a trusted man who has been with his family for decades.Raj Kapoor’s passion for the colour white was legendary. The story goes that as an impressionable teenager, he saw the wife of Balraj Sahni dressed in a […]
Nanda: Silk And Steel
The second half of Prem Rog is marked by the brilliant verbosity of dialogue writer Jainendra Jain but there are a few scenes that belong to Nanda. She plays the quietly suffering wife of a Zamindar who routinely beds an outspoken, ‘lower caste’ woman but won’t let his own widowed daughter find love with a […]
Memories Of Gold And Dross: Cinema And TV-Part 2
In the film industry, the transition is not that clear. We have had good cinema, off and on, more dependent on the directors- so Satyajit Ray (who along with masters from Bengal and South India influenced world cinema and not just Indian cinema and was active in years 1955-1991), Guru Dutt (1950s), Raj Kapoor (1950s,60s,70s even […]
Fragrant Nostalgia
The good thing about cheaper DVDs flooding the market is that one no longer has to think twice before picking up a film. My recent acquisitions include Raj Kapoor’s Prem Rog, Raj Sippy’s kidnapping caper Inkaar, Gulzar’s Khushboo and a few others just for a song. None of the above films are masterpieces from any […]
Ten Magical Collaborations
The Indian film industry is one of the largest in the world, and Indian cinema is unmatched in its variety. Tracing the history of Indian cinema through the traditional methods is not tedious – it is too gargantuan a task. This is just an attempt to revisit the Indian film history, and look at various […]
A Walk In The Clouds
Ever since I saw Raj Kapoor and Nargis in the song, Pyar Hua Ikraar Hua, my idea of monsoon romance was sealed; a single umbrella with me hanging onto a love that could have very well been my Siamese soul. But that was a long time ago. As time passed by, along with shedding all […]