Indian movies follow a tradition of showing our police officers in one of the three roles – Corrupt, Competent, Conscientious. If the cops are aligned with the villain of the movie, they are absolutely corrupt. If the hero of the movie is the Police Officer, they are competent. And in cases where the police…
Laapataa ladies, produced by Kiran Rao, Aamir Khan and Jyoti Deshpande, and directed by Kiran Rao, is India’s official entry to the 97th Academy Awards. This movie is based on a story “Two Brides” by Biplab Goswami. Laapataa Ladies is set in the rural India of 2001. This was the time when Cable TV…
I am a long time fan of Jack Reacher and I wait for the latest Jack Reacher book every year. The books, the movies (ahem) and the series, I love them all. Even when I like someone more than Reacher himself in the story. As it happened in Reacher Season 2. This year was…
Starting in the early 2003, Shrilal Shukla wrote a column in the Hindi India Today magazine for a period of two years. These columns were a look at the contemporary news and a rumination on them. The book Khabron ki Jugali by Shrilal Shukla collects those columns. My previous post was also on a…
Satire: a way of criticizing people or ideas in a humorous way, especially in order to make a political point, or a piece of writing that uses this style Harishankar Parsai is considered to be one of the greatest satirists in the Hindi language. My previous post on Pagdandiyon ka Zamana was a celebration…
What happens when the normal legal route to get a task done is made difficult and inefficient? Harishankar Parsai Jee answers this question in his essay Pagdandiyon ka Zamana. People start taking the routes which are not normal and not legal, because the task must be done. And what happens when this practice is…
Earlier this year, around the time of new year resolutions, I decided that I want to spend this year reading Hindi literature. I have read a lot of books over the past three decades of my life but a concerted effort on Hindi has not been the case. This year, I want to correct…
I am a big fan of Jack Reacher and have read all the novels of Reacher till date. Generally, I read according to a theme during an year and try to gain perspective in that theme – fiction, non-fiction or a subject. For example, this year I have decided to read Hindi literature. But…
This long weekend in India gave me an opportunity to watch a highly acclaimed movie of recent times, 12th Fail starring Vikrant Massey in the lead role. I had heard a lot of praise of this movie and all of that is well deserved. Vikrant Massey has played the role of Manoj Kumar Sharma…
Winter for me means the season for long walks while listening to podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell has a podcast called Revisionist History and in this season of long slow walks, I started listening to the episodes where I had left them in 2019. Revisionist History season four opens with a two part story on testing…