The Best of 2006

Not a bad year, after all. Added one line to my CV (professionally). And changed another. Marital status went from "Married" to ...

Riverdale High

When I was about nine/ten, my Dad and I used to across the street from our flat in Megha Mallar (a multi-storied apartment in South Calcutta...

Love At First Sight: First Meetings of Bollywood

Hindi films are nothing if not for the legends surrounding most of them. All the stars, all the movies, all the locations would have come to...

Ni.shabd: 10 Silent Scenes of Amitabh Bachchan

One of the mandatories of any list of Hindi film trivia is the story how Amitabh Bachchan was rejected in an audition for All India Radio. A...

A Sobering Thought

Yesterday, a batchmate and I were having a conversation on blogging and bloggers. An excerpt from the conversation. UC: Oh, I chatted with t...

Father, Son and the Holy Post

This is deference to Mad Momma's request that I have not done a parenting post for a long time. Actually, I was rather disconcerted by t...

Subtitles: How to make Indian Cricket more interesting!

The Gandhian display of non-violence by the Indian batsmen was made worse by the utterly predictable and soporific quotes our heroes dished ...

Tej Sapru Fan Club

In the idealistic days of college, when we used to watch Battleship Potemkin and The Bicycle Thieves in standing-room-only auditoria, we a...

Calcutta: A Love Story

All cities should have their stories chronicled. In some medium or the other. And some of them already have. Bombay, for example. The glamou...

And the Filmfare goes to...

Filmfare Awards continue to remain the Big Daddy of Indian film awards - probably because no other award has the might as big as that of Tim...

10 Things About Bollywood You Didn't Know - And Did Not Want To Ask Anybody Either!

1. Famous Bollywood choreographer P.L. Raj's full (real?) name is Peter Lewis. He adopted the name Raj to avoid the minority tag. Rememb...

How Much Land Does A Man Need?

What is connection between Leo Tolstoy and Business India’s last cover story? Well, not for everyone. Reading the cover story on India’s Hig...

In the Name of the Father... Part VI

Lage Raho... Turnaround time: 66 days. The Son, The Wife and I managed to tick off the first film on our to-watch list today as we hit PVR S...

Ja, Ball Leke Aa...

There is a major upheaval in the cricketing pantheon of the country. More and more reports are pointing out that the latest gods of Indian c...

An Evening at Guzzlers' Inn

Hey Mia, where are you? How much longer at the office? Where is Rakesh? Already on Brigade Road? Arre, there he is! Chal, come quick. Hey Ra...

32 Things To Do Before I Die

1. Meet Amitabh Bachchan. 2. Eat a full-course meal (with wine) at Zodiac Grill. 3. Teach my son to read Bengali. 4. Visit 221B Baker Street...

Ray at the Box Office

Browsing through my collection of old magazines, I came across an interview of Subhash Ghai. He was trying to explain the cross borne by the...

List Poori Filmy Hain!!!

Sahara Filmy is turning out to be the dark horse in the race of Hindi movie channels. With a whole lot of 'value-added' film program...

Iss Kahani mein Drama hain, Emotion hain, Tragedy hain...

That's how my bedside table looked for the last 21 days - as I plodded through the book @ 42.9 pages per day. Oh - but that has nothing ...