When Mithun turns with eyes glowing like embers in Manmohan Desai’s “Ganga Jamuna Saraswati” and delivers – Ek artist ko kya chahiye? Do waqt ki roti aur public ka pyaar…. the hall erupted in seetis and taalis. That still remains FTIIans favorite line.

Yeh public hai kya? Kya yeh sab jaanti hai?
Sure. It throws out inept, [...]

It’s a strange age we live in when there is information overkill and yet so often, we do not know what the truth is. Instances where we will perhaps never know what the truth is, or which version of it to believe. In an age when news has huge commercial value, [...]

This is a verbatim account of a telephonic conservation between a man and a woman tapped by our intelligence agencies. Readers are asked to formulate their own opinion on this.  

MAN: Hello… Good morning, Ma’am. 
WOMAN: What is good in this morning? 
MAN: eh… ah… Ma’am, is everything all right? 
WOMAN:  I was told that yesterday you were talking [...]

These drawings are by children of sex workers, who live in Sonagachi, Kolkata and eastern India’s largest and most famous red-light area. I have them stored in my computer for a long time, in fact I’d completely forgotten about them. A few days ago, as I was in the process of backing up the [...]

After whacking my brain left, right and center, the other day I decided that I would become Dadasaheb Phalke in my previous birth. Why not? I may not have introduced cinema into India, but like Phalke sir, I too had carried a projector to show my films in Indian villages. At some point in his [...]

I’m recently returned from Goa, where I was at IFFI for a few days, doing mostly non-IFFI things, hedonistic and aimless. I saw a couple films, but that’s not what this post is about.
I was at IFFI because I’d been on the Panorama non-fiction jury. Did I want to take on this onerous task? Not [...]

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 [...]

On the eve of the Deepavali festival, I had to urgently send a couple of DVD copies of a film of mine to a Film Festival. At the government post office that I normally frequent, out of the two multi purpose counters where one could register posts, only one was operational. The second one was [...]

Since its launch half a decade ago, Reva, India’s only electric car manufacturer, has sold 3000 cars in 24 countries. Not bad for a product that (unfortunately) looks like a glamorous rickshaw and is still having teething problems (fuse box issues, slow, safety issues, et al). Issue no. 1 seems to have been addressed [...]

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. [...]