Essays

Trapped in My Image

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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

PL Deshpande

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

Amish Tripathi

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

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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

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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

Soutik Biswas

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

Homai Vyarawalla

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...

Almost Dead in Leh

Arindam Mukherjee

In an unexpected twist, this enthusiast saw his rafting trip on the Zanskar turn into a struggle for survival against floods and landslides. Passing by wreckage of bad weather, he realised the violent river was the only way to safety.

Sholay, the Beginning

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Hindi cinema’s biggest blockbuster officially completes 35 years this 15 August, but it was actually born in 1973 in a small room. Screenplay writer Salim Khan remembers how Sholay was conceived.

Writer Blocked

Gouri Dange

The thrill of having a well-known publisher stamp its name on the spine of your debut novel doesn’t last too long, says Gouri Dange. Bruised and hurt by the publisher’s constant neglect for being an ‘unknown writer’, she decided to go it alone and self-publish her second novel.