Monojit Lahiri
Is Technology Killing Intimacy
Touch or eye-to-eye bonding can never be replaced by silly, coded, corny, cryptic SMS —condensed tight and weirdly worded.
Chumma Chumma De De
Indian society, post-globalisation may be wanting to make that critical, new-age, paradigm shift regarding morality, but still feel distinctly uncomfortable while discussing anything to do with sex.
Is Mom Your Best Friend
Things are a bit different in the West. A recent report identifies five distinct mother categories: The Perfectionist; the Unpredictable; the Me first; the Complete; and the one that is winning, the Best Friend.
Pati Patni Aur Woh
Perhaps more than any other film-maker, Yash Raj Chopra (Dhool Ka Phool to Daag, Kabhie Kabhie, Silsila and his last Jab Tak Hai
Ek Tha Tiger
Parsing the raging controversy unleashed by Girish Karnad’s broadsides against V.S. Naipaul and the revered Gurudev.
The Dumbos of Bollywood
Is Bollywood dumb, lazy or plain indifferent to physical or psychological differences and uses them as a convenient soft target for laughs or tears?
Till Marriage Do Us Part
Happy everafter in holy matrimony, maybe. But sexy starlets divorce their fans when they hitch up.
Bollywood Comes of Age
Suddenly the traditional boy-meets-girl formula, accompanied by the attendant melodramatic hi-jinx, has given way to some semblance of realism in subject, story-telling and performance.
Mofussil India Sizzles
Are these films really the new cinema, worthy of the hype and celebration and the new directors really the new stars and trail-blazers offering pulsating, exciting, no-holds-barred, creative chutzpah that separates the real from the fluff?
How About a National Dumb Day?
We live in a cool, informal and let-it-all-hang-out-environment. Nothing is sacrosanct and irreverence towards buttoned-down conventions and established norms is the new popular mantra.
Bollywood’s Hollywood Fixation
Sure, Bollywood is on the rise, but as a global force that instantly demands and gets respect, awe, admiration and attention, sorry folks, Hollywood is the real thing.
To Hell With Bollywood
Even megastars like Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan are rebelling against Bollywood— the word that is.
Romance Lost
Frankly, India of the late 1960s was totally unprepared for Rajesh Khanna. The film industry, blown out of its mind, christened him Superstar. Stardust, the new iconoclastic, irreverent and deliciously chatpata new film magazine on the block, baptized him the Phenomenon and sold out its maiden issue within days just via banners enquiring whether Rajesh will/has married his girlfriend (at that time) Anju Mahendru?
The Skinny on Ash’s Fat
Aishwarya’s figure is cause for global distress. The querry “Aishwarya figure”throws up over 4 million results on google.
Are Writers Performers
In a world awash with new tools for communication and engagement, the symbolism, mystique and magic of anonymity, however seductive, is losing ground to new anthems celebrating the spirit of contact, connection and interaction.
Canned in Cannes
The awkward fact remains that although Bollywood is the world’s largest movie factory, we don’t register even a hiccup in this gala, global, mega feast. Historically we have been conditioned and programmed to believe that it’s not the winning or losing, but participation that is the key.
