The story so far :
Cubbu is going to ‘phoren’. Cubbu needs CHARACTER CERTIFICATES from the Mumbai police. Cubbu has been handed over three sealed envelopes by the Department of Character certificates at the police HQ. Now the onus is on Cubbu to take these three envelopes to three police [...]

Mr. RHTLLAW (real hair that looks like a wig), is possibly the most Chinese looking Maharashtrian police clerk in the ‘Foreigners Registration Department’ at the CID office, Crawford Market. Put a small fake mole on Costable Kakodkar’s cheek. Stick a few strands of white hair on his chin. Give him a cigarette holder. [...]

In the last couple of months or so, the subcontinent has seen a ghastly and violent migration of human beings that is comparable with the partition of the sub-continent in 1947 and then again in 1971. It’s playing out on our TV screens and the internet.  Huge masses of Swatis leaving [...]

Nobody really liked Dey Kaka in Usha building. The kids hated him. (Including mine). They had strong reasons. Just the other day he had kicked Chotu, a cross breed between a pig and a dog, who didn’t mind children riding him as if he were a majestic horse. During the Chotu kicking episode, Dey Kaka’s [...]

It’s September 1998. Monsoons in full swing over Mumbai City. 
On one such soggy day, my cameraman and dear friend SN calls me over to his place. He tells me he wants to discuss ‘MISHTEK.’
This is a short film script, which we have been talking about for almost a year now. We have been desperate to [...]

Reading Banno’s stirring ‘Broken People’ on this very blog, has prompted me to write this piece.
EXT. COLLEGE LAWNS – A LATE EVENING OF WINTER 1990.
S, V, P and I tumble on to the soft grass of our college lawns. We have just watched Mahesh Bhatt’s ‘Ashiqui’ at Bijli cinema, a stone’s throw away. [...]

1987. Bombay. Monsoon.
Drenched, three-fourth of me dangling out of a packed local train, I was in ‘telephoto’ mode. That is, consciously being unaware of fellow ‘danglers ‘sticking to me, guard dropped against potential pickpockets and ‘gropers’, the world zipping by outside in ‘out focus’, something like that!
I was quiet enjoying fat raindrops lashing against my [...]