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50 Years of Bachchan
To commemorate the fifty years of Amitabh Bachchan (counted from the day - 7th Nov - when Saat Hindustani released in 1969), Film Companion got together five writers to choose ten favourite scenes each...
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Feluda: A Trivial Pursuit
Had written this piece about Feluda for The Hindu, around the time the sleuth had turned fifty (from the time the first novel was published). Reupping this on the blog at a time when an exciting...
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2010s: A Roundup (Films)
A special word of thanks to Vikram Bondal (@vicramb on Twitter) for reminding me that this blog has been alive for fourteen years.Read a lot of books, watched a lot of movies, listened to a fair bit of...
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2010s: A Roundup (Books)
This post is in two parts… the first section is for books on cinema while the next is for everything else, the segregation necessitated by my reading habits and not the popularity of books on cinema...
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My Guide to India in 28 Books
Mint Lounge came up with a Guide to India in 50 Books, selected by the journalists and editors of the newspaper. The editor hopes that we will take offence at the books we love but have been left out....
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45 Years of Sholay
The above visual is the poster of the Hindi-dubbed version of a Punjabi film, Do Sher. The Punjabi film released in 1974 but the Hindi film-world had changed by the time the Hindi version had come. So...
View ArticleTeachers' Day
I work for a company that values teachers quite a bit. So for Teachers' Day, many of us were asked to write a short piece on a favourite teacher. As I did it, I realised it only made sense to add a few...
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College Sweetheart
On 1st September 2002, I left Calcutta for Bangalore to join a job and have remained an outsider ever since. The last film I watched in the city was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's opulent Devdas. If there is...
View ArticleIt's a Classic! 24* Years of JJWS
This post was written on 22nd October, 2016. On an auto back from Bandra to Andheri. It is now 28 years since JJWS released. All of it is still true for me. Today I went for an event (as part of the...
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2020: A Roundup
View from my office for most part of the year. A definite perk.Time for the roundup of the most unusual year of my life is here.Work from home always makes you feel that you can sack around in your...
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Ray: A Fanboy's Review
I cannot remember when I read more polarizing reviews than for Ray on Netflix right now. Srijit Mukherji is one of the superstar directors of Bengali cinema with a large and passionate following. His...
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2021: A Roundup
During 2021 – for a couple of months – I wondered (for the first time) if I would end the year in a position to write about books, movies and the good things in life. It was the year where all our...
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Some films...
Some films are simple. It's easy to explain why you loved them, or hated them. Some films are simpler. You don't even have to explain... Everyone loves them. Or hates them. You just ask a friend...
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The futility of recommendations
Image of fans watching DDLJ at Maratha Mandir by the legendary Danish Siddiqui My daughter has ‘discovered’ Hindi cinema with 83. A rousing sports victory, memorable characters and an episodic...
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Pure Evil: A Book Review
For no reason at all, a picture of Amrish Puri from a 1980s potboiler called Loha.Thanks to the ever-growing need for content and the insatiable interest in Bollywood, listicles (how I hate this word!)...
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Don't Forget 2004: A Book Review and Musings on Political Campaigns
I finished reading Jayshree Sundar’s Don’t Forget 2004 on the first anniversary of a very unlikely electoral win of recent times. Not even its most passionate supporters gave Mamata Banerjee’s...
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2022: Roundup of Hindi Content
2022 was the year everyone predicted Bollywood would die. And yet it didn’t.The leaping tigers of RRR, the ear-jangling entry scenes of Rocky in KGF Chapter 2, the romantic flutterings of Hridayam, and...
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2022: A Roundup of Regional Language Content
After watching a lot of regional language content, I still seem to have missed out a truckload of them across languages. Blame it on time I wasted on Insta Reels! Here are my favourite five...
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2022: A Roundup of Books
My hopes of reading a few more books than last year got dashed by Netflix, Instagram and Twitter. I just about managed to hit my target (but not without some underhand tricks) and I end the year with...
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2023: A Round-up of Streaming Shows
As it turns out, ranking the shows I loved this year turned out to be most difficult - and there were so many that I loved a lot. Who cares? Here's everything I loved! Honourable Mentions Raj & DK...
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2023: A Round-up of Non-Hindi Movies
In one fell swoop, I have combined all languages of the world - except one - and created this list. 5. Barbie - Greta GerwigI was supposed to like the other film, right? Barbie was supposed to be the...
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2023: A Round-up of Books
I read an alarming low number of books this year (damn you, Reels!) but still managed to find some amazing ones, which will remain with me for a very long time. I also suffered from an advanced case of...
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2023: A Round-up of Hindi Movies
Disclaimer: I may have been involved in a professional capacity with at least one film in this list. But before you dismiss that as partiality, do note that the other reviews have been more effusive...
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