An Evening in Coney Island, 1918 It was 1918. The ‘War to End All Wars‘ was in its final leg, American President Woodrow Wilson made his famous ‘Fourteen Points‘ speech…
It was the mid-90s. “Skin-tight jeans” were a thing, and audio cassettes were prized possessions. Forget social media, even the Internet was unheard of, while cyber cafes were still a…
A sinister man in a black suit flips open his revolver and inserts bullets. As he aims the gun and fires, the letters slowly form on the screen: “Gudachari…
(Two Triumvirates, separated by four decades – give or take – hold sway over the Bollywood jungle. The parallels between the two are uncanny.) In Peshawar, British India, two young…
Khandwa, early 1930s Kumudlal Ganguly was a misfit, a square peg in a round hole. Born in a family where every male member was either a practicing lawyer or harbouring…
Geoffrey Brag was known among his friends to be an eccentric, obsessive man. I mean, whoever heard of a middle-class Englishman travel the length and breadth of India in Third-class…
Utpal Dutt. The name brings to mind a pot-bellied, bald man in his late fifties or early sixties who laughed funny and had impeccable comic timing. But a nice man…
Since the launch of Netflix in India a few months back, everyone has been crying hoarse about the lack of ‘good shows’ in the Indian catalogue. They point out, almost…
It’s that time of the year again. Rajinikanth, or Thalaivar (The Leader) as his worshipers affectionately call him, has set screens ablaze all across the world with his latest tour…
8. The Westerns Yes, we’ve always had our own brand of ‘Curry’ Westerns, complete with guns, horses and the barren landscape. Feroze Khan was the poster-boy of this genre in…