Has anything changed in the two Bihar villages that hit the headlınes? Six kilometres from Harnaut, the jeep broke down in the mud. The slipper-shod lady decided to continue her journey on elephant-back. Perched dangerously behind her and the mahout was another lady, a member of Parliament. It took the elephant three hours to reach…
‘One hears the echoes of the movement for an independent Bangladesh in Assam today’, said a Dacca newspaper recently. The situation in Assam and the north-east is as difficult as it is complex. Although decades of political and economic indifference have pushed the Assamese into their present agitation, the movement has already acquired dangerous colours…
Three documents seem to indicate that the Assam problem is not about to be easily solved. Intractable and increasingly aggressive, the Assam agitation last fortnight edged closer to ugly confrontation. The deadline for a Central government decision on the foreigners issue set by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the Gana Sangram Parishad (GSP)…
For prime minister Narendra Modi, 2015 has been an annus horribilis, bracketed by the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) waiting loss in the Delhi elections in February, and now the even more humiliating and momentous loss in Bihar. Bihar has been bruited about, mainly by the BJP, as a referendum on Modi’s popularity. Modi heavily invested…
Says the self-opinionated master. But he is also first-rate. I’m a very well known painter. I don’t care for those stultified art critics. It’s you ‘unknowledgeables’ – who can reach out on our behalf.” The ego behind that ‘well known painter’ remark is evident as is Biren De’s scorn for things conventional, and his voluminous…
Dozens of olympiads and years of discussion and disappointments later, India is still athletically a huge zero, says Chaitanya Kalbag. 1976 promises to be a year to remember: with five Sundays in February, America’s Bicentennial, and the Olympics in Montreal. Right now, July’s looming up on the horizon. The Olympic Games are scheduled to begin…
You’re a member of the Hindi film audience. You see most of the films in town. You listen to the songs regularly on the radio. And you try humming a few bars in your bathroom. How long do you actually remember the words, or the music, of a Hindi film song? Agreed there are…
Authoritarianism may have professedly ended with the Emergency, but it continues to afflict many walks of our life. It has raised its ugly head, from time to time, in the country’s premier educational institutions. Young people, supposedly “tomorrow’s leaders”, are systematically subjected to stifling control, unenlightened concepts of discipline, and any protests they raise are…
Fourteen years younger than VS Naipaul, Shiva Naipaul was born in 1945 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and was educated in Trinidad and Oxford. He began writing in college, and his short stories were accepted for Penguin Modern Stories 4. His first novel, Fireflies, was published at the end of 1971. and his second, The Chip-Chip Gatherers,…
The badmen in films only make good punching-bags for the heroes and fight-composers, says CHAITANYA KALBAG. Picture Little Red Riding Hood, seated in a cinema house looking at a Hindi movie. When the drums growl and the shadows lengthen, when the script says it’s time for evil, when the hoi polloi shift to the edge of…
Indians have been hiding money from their rulers for centuries. The best way to secrete your wealth away was to turn it into gold, and either wear it or bury it. Little wonder that India was the world’s biggest gold buyer last year. It consumed 842.7 tonnes. Despite the Indian economy not doing too well…
Zaherra is one of those unfortunates who are jinxed from the word ‘go’. Sometime back she said, “What’s not in a name?” and changed the ‘I’ in Zahirra to an ‘e’. But Zaherra is still lost in the wilderness. She does not even have a Russian fiancé like Katy (Cypher) Mirza, to console herself with,…
“I Think I’ve Just Been Lucky” “I’m what some people call a teenage star. But really. I think I’ve just been lucky. I’m told that I was born on the night of December 28. 1951, precisely at the moment the first star appeared in the sky over Bombay. If so, that star was a good…
Nine Film Personalities Discuss Their Dream Schemes! “India” said James Shepherd in a recent issue of TIME, “stamps out movies like cookies – and most are just as durable.” At once, our film critics, the tribe that revels in dissecting and deprecating nine out of every ten Hindi films that are churned out by our…
It took me eight months to discover that I was living next door to a film person. And that too, because the chap appeared in a “daring, all-clothes-barred” gatefold In a girlie mag. Yes. My neighbour was there in B & W. in all his hairy, slightly paunchy evidence. Undressed. In disabille. There was a…
On four Rock evenings beginning Christmas Eve, a few hundred Bombayites Filled the Bhulabhai Desai auditorium to watch, and to listen to, the Theatre Group weave two and odd hours of phantasmagoric GODSPELL. The musical presentation of the Gospel according to St. Mathew was produced and directed by Pearl Padamsee. GODSPELL, conceived by John Michael…
A really good film should not be concerned so much with its plot, as with its characters and the interplay of those characters. Though the characters, the intelligent filmmaker aims at establishing in the consciousness of the spectators the elements that would lead them to the idea he wants to communicate; he attempts to place…
Kem Chho, Chandra Bhai? Fine, I see. Thought I’d discover what makes you tick. Tell me what’s doing. Chandra Barot does not answer at once. He’s busy buttoning his cuff. And then: I’m directing Don. And this is keeping me on my toes right now. It’s a fun experience, shooting with Amitabh and Zeenat…
Russell’s films on composers deal with subjects very neurotic and with personal disorders. If they were not neurotic, Russell feels, they would not have written their music. Their obsession endows them with a different kind of vision. Making a biographical film 100 minutes long is quite a tough proposition, Especially when it’s on the…
Round and round the rugged rock, rugged lovers run the race In any formula set-up, there’s nothing better than a few digressions on Young Love. Thus, the director said ‘Let there be romance, and there was a love scene Soft music. A setting sun. Birds chirping, flying home-wards. And a boy and a girl in some woodland.…
An American who acts in Hindi movies? And who’s Indian except for his fair skin and blond hair? “I don’t believe it” was the reaction of most people who met Tom Alter at the recent screening of diploma films arranged by Mr. Girish Karnad, the Director of the Film and Television of India, at Bombay.…
Mr. Girish Karnad, the Director of the Film and Television Institute of India, Poona, arranged a screening of the Diploma Films 1974, on the 1st and 2nd September in Bombay. In his brief introduction Mr. Karnad said the Diploma films were characterised by two points: students made films on subjects which they would not normally…
Rajika Kirpalani did not believe in gods of any kind. Yet she must have been beloved of them, for she died young— too young for those who knew her. While speaking on the telephone on the 1st of February, 1974, she was struck down by a massive cerebral haemorrhage. She was just 24. A year…
Pandit Giriraj is one of the few virtuosos of the “gayaki” school of sitar music in India. He recently completed a two-and-a-half month tour of European cities in mid-November. This tour followed close on the heels of another extensive West German tour of his in early 1974. Giriraj’s winter musical itinerary mostly covered West German…
If you’re the sort of person who expects value for every paisa you spend, go see Sholay, 23 reels and three and a half hours later, you’ll stagger out of the auditorium and gulp in the sweet air outside. Your ears will have been assailed by stereophonic sound (If the theatre had facilities for it),…
The Goan Institute present ed its maiden theatrical production on the 25th of August at the St. Xavier’s School Auditorium. Written and directed by Derek Antao, the play, REQUIEM FOR A PROFESSOR, had a plot which sagged so much that the seams were discernible at times. Lloyd D’Mello, as the ageing Professor Joe Varella, succeeded…
Which party will you vote for? It is a bit like England’s witch trials in the middle ages. You were dunked in water as a test; if you did not drown you were pronounced a sorceress and burnt at the stake. Whichever government you elect, the choice is not clear, clean, and comforting. By now…
Last weekend, just before the first phase of voting in India’s 16th general election opened, a group of people gathered in Delhi for a “nation-building” meeting. For two days they thrashed and turned in their search for a better alternative to the choices facing the nation. They were exercised by the epic corruption and mis-governance,…
Several moons ago, a car driver in Chennai told me the fascinating story of a young man whom he drove around in Coimbatore during the 2009 general elections. At every stop, the driver said, the young man would return with a bulging sack that he would stuff into the boot. The young man was collecting…
Certainly not the growing number of people who believe that “free speech” means a loose mouth and the abuse of certain classes or communities. Imran Masood, Azam Khan and Mulayam Singh Yadav are not afraid of Narendra Modi. Nor is the swelling saffron sena if you believe Ram Rajya is about to dawn. In its…
By Wednesday elections had been held for 438 seats, or four-fifths of the 16th Lok Sabha, and it seemed like a good point to draw breath and take stock of the men and women who will wield power over us for the next five years. Many of us believe that these elections will be decided…
The end of campaigning in Amethi in a cacophony of anger, derogation, and obloquy was briefly leavened by “Twitter joining Rajinikanth.” The Superstar’s followers piled up at the rate of 20,000 an hour. Not even Narendra Modi, one of the Thalaivar’s first followers, could have matched that. Fantasy had trumped politics. As if in affirmation,…
One word summed up the five-week election: certitude. From the very beginning, most of us were certain that the National Democratic Alliance would win power. It is fairly certain that the Congress party will suffer its worst defeat in 16 general elections. Over 300,000 kilometres, 440 rallies, 1,350 holograms, 4,000 chai pe charchas, and a…
I was hard put on Wednesday to find an advertisement remembering Rajiv Gandhi on the anniversary of his assassination. It was a telling contrast with a few months ago when the newspapers were flooded, just before the elections were announced, with ads extolling UPA II’s achievements. Political parties do suffer huge losses, but nothing has…
The Rajyabhishek in the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan forecourt was a sight for sore eyes, and understandably some of us went ape even if we were not among the 4,000 people attending Narendra Modi’s oathtaking. It was still a modest event compared with the 1.8 million people who attended Barack Obama’s January 2009 inauguration. Talking about…
If you believe in signs and omens, all the days and dates this year coincide with 1947, our year of independence (I have Amitabh Bachchan to thank for this nugget). The movie “Great Expectations” was also launched in 1947. That fits in with the sentiment nationwide. The expectations are scary because we have dug ourselves…
It seemed like the rhyming slogans, the election jingles, and the grandiloquence of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto were all that we needed to shake us out of our psychic numbing during the past few years. Alliteration hit you everywhere you turned. Narendra Modi told a small audience last Sunday that we needed to ramp…
Three weeks and counting, and besides a bit of soft power-mongering there is no flurry of executive actions to take away one’s breath. Our impatience is understandable, but then the new dispensation is taking its lumps. Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned party workers in Goa that we will have to swallow bitter medicine if we…
One of my prized possessions is a fossilised limpet, a kind of sea snail that attaches itself very, very tightly to rocks. The fossil must be hundreds of thousands of years old. It must have been prised off a rock with some force, the kind that is trying to get many of our privileged leaders…
To begin with, Modi is under microscopic watch and Deng never was. Modi has a good majority in the lower house of Parliament, but that does not mean lawmakers will blindly rubber-stamp his legislative efforts. If you do the arithmetic the National Democratic Alliance stands little chance of a majority in the Rajya Sabha, even…
Our members of Parliament sowed the wind in the 15th Lok Sabha and are reaping the whirlwind in the 16th Lok Sabha. The last Lok Sabha worked only for 61 per cent of its scheduled time, the worst in the past half-century. The Bharatiya Janata Party was in very aggressive opposition to the United Progressive…
When a little girl named Topsy is asked in Uncle Tom’s Cabin if she knew who made her, she says “I expect I grow’d.” This Thursday, July 10, Arun Jaitley will declare financial independence when he unveils the Union Budget for 2014/15 without the Planning Commission breathing down his neck. True, the budget drafters in…
Change comes stealing in on padded feet in the Narendra Modi government, and change is starting to happen in the offices of his ministers. One of them told me that when he took office, at least eight officials had to sign off on any file that came to him for approval; he has cut that…
This weekend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Nepal on his third foreign trip in ten weeks. By the end of September, he will also have visited Japan and the United States. Looming large on his itinerary will be China, which he visited four times as Gujarat’s chief minister in his quest for investments.…
We are hopefully in the last of this summer’s dog days, and Sirius (or Svana as it is known in Hindu astrology) will glow a little less brilliantly in the hot night sky. Dog days are said to induce all sorts of mental upheaval, agitation, and unpleasantness. Perhaps that is why much of Europe wisely…
It was a very Hindu week, starting with Raksha Bandhan and ending with Janmashthami, and midway through we were treated to fireworks by Yogi Adityanath, the bold new face of the Bharatiya Janata Party. A five-time member of the Lok Sabha from Gorakhpur, he was just 26 when he won his first parliamentary seat in…
Somewhere, through the unbearable din of television and anti-social media this week, I saw one tweet that plaintively asked why we were hearing so much from everybody but not enough from Narendra Modi at the BRICS summit in Brazil. Our prime minister met the leaders of China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa, but coverage back…
It is a war without end, a no-win situation in which nobody can provide answers to some questions: How long will this go on? Which side will eventually prevail? What is the cost to the nation in money, matériel, men?
This was has no name. It is more an endless series of skirmishes than a sustained military confrontation. Yet, this war has been raging intermittently for 26 years in Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.
Poor Manmohan Singh is caught between the Pros and the Cons. The Pros in the Opposition are telling the prime minister, who has never seemed sullied by money politics, that he should be resigning. The Congress, led by A. Raja, is telling him that he is allegedly complicit in the 2G scandal. The sad part…
“I have said that we will never take to nuclear weapons even if this country is going to be destroyed in the absence of (such weapons). I will not take to it, even if the whole world takes to it.” …
Optimism is good, but let’s not be foolhardy. It is good that we are feeling bucked up at the beginning OF 2018. Major economies expect growth in tandem for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2008. World trade is seen growing at a decent clip after two slow years. Commodity prices are firming…
13 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The resemblance to Indira Gandhi is eerie—the sari draped over the head, the dark glasses, the high-pitched oratory, the imperious wave of the hand. Even her signature “Jai Hind!” (Victory to India) at the end of every campaign…
14 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 14 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s main opposition party said on Saturday he was the target of a series of car bomb blasts that killed at least 31 people, wounded up to 100, and triggered rioting and arson in the…
In a spirited panel discussion moderated by Business Today editor Chaitanya Kalbag, Yashwant Sinha, MP and former finance minister, M. Damodaran, former SEBI chairman, Satya Poddar, Partner, Ernst & Young, Samiran Chakraborty, Regional Head of Research, Standard Chartered Bank and Nilesh Shah, President, Corporate Finance, Axis Bank, shared their views. Edited excerpts Chaitanya Kalbag: All…
This mid-December afternoon, the Ear detects the rumble of Old Man 76 gasping through his last lap, and the first stirrings of Childe 77. Here are some optimistic predictions for the twelvemonth ahead disregarding the doomsday projections of Malthusian midwives who expect 1977 to be stillborn: The Labor Party in Britain will label Margaret “Thatcher…
In his first media interaction since The Walt Disney Company took over UTV, RONNIE SCREWVALA, now turned employee, tells CHAITANYA KALBAG and AJITA SHASHIDHAR how he intends to take the company to greater heights. How difficult was it to transition from a successful entrepreneur-driven company to being a part of a large global company? UTV…
We’re a long way from solving Britain’s race riddle Quite a few of my trips to London have been shadowed by death, or the portent of death. On September 11, 2001, I was about to board a non-stop flight to London from Singapore when my phone rang. My daughter in California said, “It looks like…
India must construct an enlightened climate change policy ‘Food Prices set to rise as floods ruin crops’. ‘Prime Minister promises aid to flood victims’. Does that sound like a recent edition of the Hindustan Times? Wait a minute. These headlines are from a British newspaper. A week ago, I was walking through a huge tropical…
The Civil Services still remain a big draw Fresh out of South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi made a particularly strong speech in Benares in February. He was gloomy about Indians earning the right to self-governance. He said a British member of the “much-abused” Indian Civil Service (ICS) had asked him to put in a good word…
“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp Strange how time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and fifty-one years ago, Siraj-ud-Daulah demonstrated what an overcrowded prison can do to human beings with the Black Hole of Calcutta. “Figure to yourself, my friend, if possible, the situation of…
The old city is giving way to a new bright-eyed metropolis Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!” Outside, Ambassador taxis were inching along the flooded street. The electricity would go the moment you hung up your…
The utter oddity of 21st century India still dancing to the tune of caste With this kind of rebellious example, how will fair play and righteousness prevail? Won’t the lower castes get out of hand? In this decadent age, common men follow the right paths out of fear if that were destroyed, where could we…
18 May 2005 Reuters News English (c) 2005 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 18 (Reuters) – India is looking to become a major oil products exporter while it aggressively chases foreign petroleum assets and sharply boosts imports of gas, the “fuel of the 21st Century”, its oil minister said on Wednesday. Mani Shankar Aiyar also…
Speaking about the 1971 elections to a Newsweek correspondent, Mrs Indira Gandhi had said: “I am the real issue in this election.” In 1977, too, it is she who is the real issue. Her challengers’ election manifestos say hardly anything new, except that they vow to ‘wipe out’ the ‘scourges’ of the Emergency. 320 million…
I experienced my epiphany about consumer media a couple of years ago on a Tokyo subway. When I lived in Japan in the mid-1990s, commuters would be bent earnestly over their little pulp paper backs or Manga comics. Now, just over a decade later, everyone’s fingers are flying over buttons on little machines that are…
The guns are yet to fall silent in the North-east but in places where development has made an inroad, peace has prevailed. Only by bringing all stakeholders on board can the government hope to end the region’s alienation. “… we have no social affinities with the Hindus or Mussalmans. We are looked down upon by…
Visually, the scene was vintage Bergman. A low canopy of sullen clouds scudded over a landscape whipped by icy winds. Despair seemed to be wrung out of every muscle of the ragged bunch of men stumbling down the village’s main dirt street. There were 15 of them, all walking with the collapsing gait of acute…
Two experts on Soviet studies, both lecturers in major universities, were informed late last month by the University Grants Commission (UGC) that their applications for short-term post-doctoral research trips to the USSR had been rejected. No reasons were given, but both lecturers believe it was because they were not considered politically acceptable. Another lecturer in…
Political cinema, like the new wave of the mid-’70s, has long acquired a pejorative meaning in India. At most, a political film that catches the public eye is built around a social theme that fits in with the Government’s meandering philosophy. A ‘successful’ political film also usually turns out to be feature-length, in colour, and…
Every dissenter is in a minority of one, and K. Ashok Rao, 36, deputy manager in Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), is discovering what it is like to take on this public sector leviathan. Rao is, after all, only one of BHEL’S 70,000 employees. Yet, on February 23 this year, Rao filed a writ petition…