Fifty years ago, our sleepy little town of Bolarum was not very different from RK Narayan’s Malgudi – the kind of place where people recognised you by your walk, your cough, or your bicycle bell. As I mentioned in an earlier article, our cinematic universe then had just three planets – Sri Sai Talkies and…
A long-buried BBC interview with Dr B.R. Ambedkar has come up for air again, and it is doing what Ambedkar usually does when allowed to speak freely – spoiling the mood at the Gandhi-Godse nostalgia party. In this remarkable 1955 exchange with broadcaster Lionel Fielden, Ambedkar slices through the Mahatma’s saintly packaging with surgical disdain….
There was a time when the first signs of greying brought with them a quiet acceptance of ageing, a casual shrug of the shoulders, and a new pack of hair dye – usually ‘natural black’ that fooled no one. Today, they bring internet meltdowns. A recent photo of Virat Kohli in London did not show…
It all began, as most outrages do these days, with a WhatsApp forward. A quiet evening, a ping, and there she was – Sushma Swaraj in 2014, addressing the Lok Sabha as Leader of the Opposition, exuding grace, clarity, and a level of dignity so foreign to today’s Parliament that it felt almost fictional. She…
It is official: the iconic Sangeet Theatre has now been repurposed into Medicare Hospital, and for many Hyderabadis, the diagnosis is heartbreak. Once a landmark where cinematic culture and youthful romance bloomed, Sangeet is now a clinical, air-conditioned box promising health care in a neighborhood that already has plenty of it. Why another hospital? Social…
Last week, as I tried to glimpse the ghost of an old English film outside the illustrious, now-vanished Sangeet Theatre, I found myself staring into the reflective green glass of a new building. The old marquee, once a promise of 70mm magic, has vanished entirely. In its place stands a multispecialty hospital, its CT scan…
Once upon a simpler time, a shower meant soap, water, and getting out before your sibling started banging on the bathroom door. Today, apparently, you are a barbarian unless you follow a 10-step ritual involving scented scrubs, antibacterial potions, double cleansers, three kinds of oils, and something called ‘hydration locking,’ which sounds less like hygiene…
If Tollywood were a religion, its actors would be gods, and the cinema hall their temple. In Andhra and Telangana, this faith comes with rituals: sky-high cutouts of heroes anointed with milk, garlanded with crane-lifted gaja malas, and serenaded by teen maar beats hammered out on steel plates. For decades, fans have treated first-day-first-show tickets…
Until some 12 years ago, my wife and I were regulars at Parent-Teacher Meetings in Sharjah, UAE. Like most expatriates, then, we lived in Sharjah, not for the sea breeze or cultural charm, but because rents were lower than in Dubai. I worked at Gulf News in Dubai, which meant a daily 27 km commute…
If you happened to be on the Dubai Tram last week and thought you saw a man who looked a lot like Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum standing quietly on the platform, chatting with officials, you weren’t hallucinating. That was the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, casually…
