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Essays
Once a Beatle…
He had the worst title ever—‘the world’s unluckiest man’. But Pete Best made a good fist of it after being dismissed as the original drummer of The Beatles in 1962. He recounts the momentous tour to Hamburg, the death of his naivete and his suicide attempt two years later
One Mistake of My Life
During a stint at a publishing firm, the author shared the dubious distinction of rejecting what has since become India’s biggest publishing sensation. Paperback copies, lining shelves of bookstores, still seem to mock her judgement.
Trapped in My Image
For the lead role in Gulaal, Raj Singh Chaudhary, a brawny former model, played a wimpy, nerdy student. After years of struggle, Raj shot to the limelight with the movie’s success. And then suddenly, Bollywood was asking him to play the exact same character over and over again.
The Man Who Resides in Music
There are no hardships in the world of music, only pleasure, Pandit Mallikarjun Mansur had once said. For all who knew this great khayal singer, a man for whom music was religion itself, nothing could ring more true. On his birth centenary, there couldn’t be a more appropriate tribute to the man and his genius than this article written for his 60th birthday by his friend and eminent Marathi playwright and actor PL Deshpande.
The MBA Writer
Rejection slip after rejection slip almost led The Immortals of Meluha to an ignominious death before it rose to become an instant chartbuster. Amish Tripathi on being the author of an unexpected bestseller.
No Country for Love
Priyanka Verma was forced to go into hiding with her husband Ujjwal after her uncles ordered her ‘honour killing’ for marrying outside her community. The couple have been on the run for nearly six months now, constantly shifting cities and hotels to avoid being hunted down. Out of money and exhausted living the life of a fugitive, Priyanka says she’ll not live in fear anymore.
In Mother We Trust
A year after completing school, Magdalene Polton, the daughter of a rich landowner in Bengal, became the second nun to join Mother Teresa in her mission to serve the sick and the poor. Now, at 82, Sister Gertrude, as she came to be called, is the only surviving member of this original group. She recalls the early days when they would beg each day for the poor, but struggle to feed themselves, surviving solely on the strength of prayer.
A Tipsy-Turvy State
There are few quite like the merry men of Communist Kerala. From a group’s 27-year crusade for senior citizens’ right to subsidised alcohol to others who shoot off indignant SMSes if a liquor shop delays opening its shutters by even five minutes, Soutik Biswas records the desperation of the Malayali alcoholic.
Home Alone, at 97
Three years short of being 100, Homai Vyarawalla believes that spontaneity is the key to life. This is what motivated her to become India’s first woman photojournalist and capture the key moments of India’s independence, to sell the Tata Nano gifted to her by the company the day it arrived, and to fearlessly continue living alone in Vadodara. In her own words...
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