Three films amongst the very many that I have seen in the last two months deserve a special mention. Pestonjee (dir: Vijaya Mehta, 1987), Chhoti Si Baat (dir: Basu Chatterjee, 1975) and Chakra (dir: Rabindra Dharmaraj, 1980) are the films that I am talking about and I saw them all after a gap of two [...]

As the last shot of the film ran through the sound studio projector, the three minute flute piece for the yet to be done end titles, had already begun. The re-recordist’s fingers were alert, ready on the faders and my sound designer gave a smiley sigh of relief. The mixing of my children’s film was [...]

I was born, bred and educated in Mumbai. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai have shaken me completely and I find it difficult to concentrate on my work today. I am shell-shocked with the visuals the television news channels are showing round the clock and am deeply concerned about the total decay in the administrative and [...]

November 28, 2008. 1.52 pm
The last 40 hours or so, as one watches the images of the horrific happenings in Mumbai on television, one is shocked, dazed, speechless, confused, angry, sad, scared, hurt, helpless and vulnerable. As one struggles to put together some perspective to it all, what is even more disturbing is the alarming [...]

Caesura (noun): A pause or an interruption as in “After an ominous caesura the speaker continued.”
One fine morning the other day, I woke up and impulsively decided that it was time to take a caesura.
Maybe it was not so impulsive… My two ‘ready-to-hit-the-floor’ projects had got delayed at the eleventh hour. A letter [...]

A friend sent me this sms today.
“6 am rush hour. Getting stuff ready for school. I get a call on my cell. A polite male voice wishes me ’salaam walekum, bhai jaan hai?’ … I stammer ‘nahi, nahi’. My mind is blank, being yanked into a different world. I search earnestly, is it — salaam [...]

I don’t know whether they were meant to be 4 women, or 1, or 3, or 2. Their voices often overlapped. There was quite a lot of operatic yodeling or yodellic humming, or whatever it is called. The tune, haunting at first, became monotonous by the end.
As did the performances, each one impeccable, and yet, [...]

Sushma, my wife, had agreed upon this one bedroom-kitchen-hall abode that we are presently residing in, mainly because our colony, Satellite Park, has a lot of open spaces – a rare commodity in a land starved city like Mumbai. Besides, it is just a stone’s throw away from Jogeshwari Railway Station. But after having lived [...]