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A good Indian wife
For those who need the summary of the story, please check Goodreads. The Good Indian wife is a novel of many qualities, in spite of a few flaws, perhaps because it’s Anne Cherian’s first. First a simple but effective story, based on a simple theme: can...
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Nutan speaks about Bimal Roy
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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Nutan blog changes
Hey, this wasn't expected!! Hi, well, as you can see, Overblog has forced me to modify the outlook of the blog! As a result, all the Nutan photo albums which I had placed on the left banner were removed to some obscure, out of the way location. So I've...
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India 2015
Hi all, this blog will revert to a travelog for a few days, as I'm off to Pilani, Rajasthan with my school, for a ten-day stay there and thereabouts. After the failure (seems a strong word, but well, that's what it really was...) of our attempt last year...
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Journée bien remplie...
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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Nutan the poet
Nutan, who loved bhajans and classical music, has written some poetry, of which I have collected a little over the years. Given her talent and the quality of what I present here, there must be much more, so I went to Lalitha Tamhane's book on Nutan Asen...
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Nutan picture treasure-trove
Below you'll find a number of the folders in which I have collected pictures of Nutan over the years. Most of them have been found on the net, but if some readers consider their posting an offense to their rights, please contact me so I can remove them....
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Silsila, the spiciness of exposure
So much has already been said about this Yash Chopra 1981 movie… And here I am adding to the pileup! Well, I hope it won’t be too long and too boring to read. In fact what I want to say can be quickly summed up: I’m perplexed at actors accepting to stage...
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Apur Sansar, tenderness
Last addition to a programme begun 10 years ago with Pather Panchali, here are a few words about the trilogy's n°3 about which I'm sure that nothing has been left unsaid (check story here). It's a vision of tenderness; centered around the character of...
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A new Nutan treasure-trove
Well, perhaps not so new if you knew it, naturally. But here I found some 400 pictures of the actress, a number of which do not come out in the English-based search engines, probably because the language used on the website is Cyrillic Russian (АКТРИСЫ...
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Lady Nutan
Hello ! As Nutan’s birthday was coming up, I wanted to resume some hold on the blog (sorry readers for my lack of habit, another blog has kept me busy, plus my PhD research) and went through my hoard of Nutan stuff, so I’ll put up some of it as an illustration...
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Tere ghar ke samne - more delight!
Tere ghar ke samne (1963) has a Molièresque quality to it. I don’t know if English-speaking readers know about Molière, but this story of two young lovers who want to marry in spite of their cantankerous fathers immediately made me think of L’Avare, or...
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Tabu, the dark queen on the Bollywoodian chessboard
I’d seen other films with her before, but I really discovered Tabu thanks to Cheeni kum. “Cini kam” means “less sugar”. And that’s what Bollywood has to offer with Tabu: a less sugary actress! With Tabu, the sweetness of many other mainstream actresses...
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Kanchanjungha, the moment of revelation
I owe Sharmi an IOU because she’s the lover of “threadbare movies” who watched and beautifully reviewed Satyajit Ray’s Kanchanjangha (1962) on her blog and made me want to watch it! Well, everybody whose review I read ( check here and here ) calls it...
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Bandini, Bimal Roy's ode to purity
I remember feeling annoyed when, a few years ago, somebody to whom I was voicing my pleasure at recently discovered Bollywood movies, bluntly told me: “oh yes, but Indian movies now… you want to see those from the 60s and the 70s!” Whether he was right...
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Chhalia, Nutan's contribution to the Indo-pakistani peace process
In Chhalia (Manmohan Desai, 1960), we have another of Raj Kapoor’s avatars: his character personifies a “chhaliya”, translated by Philip as a cheat, or artful deceiver, but who in fact doesn’t deceive anyone, and I wonder whether we shouldn’t say “cunning...
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Difficult daughters - Manju Kapur
Difficult Daughters, by Manju Kapur, written in 1998, tells the story of Virmati, an Amritsar-based young girl, the eldest daughter of an middle-class Arya Samaj family in which nevertheless certain traditions weigh as much as in any other more backward...
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The white tiger, movie
Arvind Adiga's story has been turned into a movie, shot by Ramin Bahrani and which has just come out on Netflix. It's an excellent movie, which does full credit to the novel; I really have no negatives about it. The cast is great, led by a glorious Adarsh...
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My name is Khan, or: what can blunt truth achieve?
We shall overcome... Karan Johar’s My name is Khan (2010), starring Shahrukh Khan and Kajol – her great comeback since Fanaa (U me aur ham being not much more than a Devgan promotional), is a movie about truth and violence, like Fanaa in fact, with which...
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Déjà les souvenirs!
Bonjour à tous, Voilà, nous sommes rentrés... Normal, évidemment, mais bon, que cela a été vite! Le séjour dans le Rajasthan, avec notre chauffeur privé VIP, les passages endiablés à Delhi, et puis le séjour dans les neiges (enfin, les boues) de l'Himachal...
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Achanak: what is the value of human life?
Gulzar’s acclaimed Achanak (Suddenly, 1973) suffers from a bothersome defect, its well-meaning intentions. The film contains much worth, but it is too preoccupied by the demonstration process for its own good. What a film says is as important as how it...
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Allers et venues au Rajasthan
Bonjour! Aujourd'hui vendredi 13 aout, nous sommes à Udaipur, sous la mousson, qui nous a fait rebrousser chemin puisque nous avions quitté la ville pour aller dormir à Ranakpur (à vos cartes!), mais l'hotel a telephone alors que nous sortions de Udaipur,...
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Third-class ticket
Have you heard of an author called Heather Wood ? Have you heard about this book “Third-class ticket” (1980)? No? Neither had I, until recently. But someone gave it to me, suggesting it might be interesting to read, and I took it along with me during...
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A passage to India - mine!
This isn't going to be a review of David Lean's famous movie , and my English-speaking readers will have to put up with a bit of French, because this blog is temporarily going to be used as a travelblog for my upcoming trip to India, starting this Friday!...
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Love aaj kal, a vindication of the past?
For once I thought I’d jump back to the present and enjoy a little contemporary Bollywood. So I pored in my box of unwatched movies and saw Love aaj kal (Imtiaz Ali, 2009) with the alluring eyes of Deepika Padukone smiling at me with their healthy skin...