How could I let March 17th go by without some reference to the small island that gave us The Commitments, Into the West, The Pogues, and those guys who sang “Two Hearts Beat as One“? The question is how to link the country where I spent all those summers as a kid (in the same […]
Omkara, the back story
In 2007, we saw Anupama Chopra’s SRK book released, which told of Khan’s bio and career trajectory, while also giving readers an intro to the Bombay film industry. Later in the same year, Stephen Alter’s Confessions of a Bollywood Love Thief made its appearance. (Try reading a book with that title on the […]
15 Years Ago in Bombay
…one of the March 12th bombs went off here, inside the Sea Rock. When I first saw the hotel, in 2005, I was told by my companion that it was rumored to be haunted. We had drinks and bad Chinese food in the quasi-Tiki bar at the back, looking directly down on the blackness […]
Breakfast with Vikram
Met Vikram Chandra for a breakfast interview yesterday. The totally mellow and down-to-earth author was in town because his maha-novel Sacred Games was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. The book is sodden with filmi references, just one more reason why I loved it. More about the interview […]
Ad Nauseum, or, I used to love you; now I can’t stand the sound of your voice.
When I signed up for a packet of channels from India a while back, my immediate favorite of the group was NDTV 24/7. In addition to the round-the-clock news coverage, they also offer a quasi-Entertainment Tonight show six days a week, every Sunday morning Barkha Dutt takes on some current topic of controversy […]
They’re baaaaaaack
…well, in April anyway. April 25th, to be exact. (Except if you’re attending the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Tejas, where it will screen on March 8, or the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, where it will be shown on March 15.) But in the meantime, there are […]