Let's talk about Bollywood!

For this year's Nutan ki janmadin, I have decided to make you discover how attached she was to her animal friends. She was mostly a dog-lover, it seems, and apparently it was a family thing. 22 dogs at home, at one point, says Mohnish!! Here are first...

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Woman to woman is the first book I read by Madhulika Liddle. She’s written more, of which I had been aware, since I read her blog where she had mentioned them, but for some reason I had relented until now. It’s a quickly read collection of 12 short stories,...

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This 1990 movie was Ray’s last but one, only to be succeeded by Agantuk a year later before his death. Its title means “branches of the tree”: the film deals with a family situation and so the genealogical reference is clear; but the tree is such a powerful...

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Ok, voilà la partie « plus » du voyage, qui s’est trouvée rajoutée sans préméditation, car cette journée à Mandawa pour Divali n’était pas prévue… Je devais avoir une troisième journée de cours à BK BIET et comme je l’ai dit, je crois, le directeur s’est...

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La Conférence ICCS est maintenant terminée, et en ce qui me concerne, je suis satisfait d'avoir pu faire ma petite présentation sur "The importance of language in communication", pour laquelle j'avais quand même passé du temps, avant de venir en Inde,...

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Ouf! la journée n'est pas encore finie; il y a encore tout à l'heure le repas avec animation devant la guesthouse comme le premier soir, mais déjà la journée a été bien fatigante! Matinée occupée par la série de speeches par des industriels invités pour...

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De retour dans la douce Pilani, où le léger voile matinal nous caresse gentiment, et en attente du début des festivités de la Conférence ICCS, voici quelques nouvelles du voyage qui m'a amené ici. Le vol Air India s'est bien déroulé, la nuit à bord aussi...

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Bollywood actress Nutan talks about Bimal Roy... "We have very few directors like Bimal Roy to begin with but what made him special that he was not a jack of all trades, he was master of all trades. He was a very good cameraman, very good photographer,...

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Sunny Pawar Before knowing that Garth Davis was a successful commercials director, I stood up from the screening of his first feature movie, Lion (2016) telling myself, “well now, that was nice, but rather commercial”. Not everything is bad about commercialization:...

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It seems appropriate today to speak about Firaaq, a 2008 movie which is Nandita Das’s debut film venture, based on the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim riots, in which Indian PM Modi had been suspected of biased non-intervention. Today, because the pressure of...

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The long-awaited 80th anniversary of Nutan's birth has arrived! On top of being able to order Lalitha Tamhane's book in its English version (hopefully, I'll try asap), here's an article which, in agreement with Seema who had wondered if this contribution...

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Why did I decide to read EM Forster’s A passage to India? Probably no other reason than it’s about a European’s vision of India and I had enjoyed some other books by the same author, Howard’s End and A room with a view. Then there was a film to watch...

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Went to see Parched (2015), by Leena Yadav, of (not good) Shabd fame. So I was a bit wary of what was to come. What came was a rather pleasant surprise, I’m happy to say. Parched is the story of four gujarati women, stuck all four of them in male-dominated...

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Thanks to Anu Warrier’s Conversations over chai, I have just been the fortunate viewer of Astitva, by Mahesh Manjrekar, a film which was shot in 2000. If you haven’t read her review, please do, it’s a thoughtful, well-balanced commentary of the movie,...

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It’s weird how when one starts wondering about a Satyajit Ray movie, one is faced with lots of people telling everyone it’s a masterpiece – this 1969 movie is even somewhere graced with the ubiquitous title of Ray’s best film ever – and how so little...

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