An unfathomable fury: on Bhisham Sahni's (and Govind Nihalani's) Tamas

[ Did a version of this piece for Flipkart Stories ] In one of the quietest but most effective scenes in Govind Nihalani’s 1988 telefilm Tam...

'If a plumber said she had plumber's block, would you condone it?' - a Q&A with Jerry Pinto

[ Did this interview for Scroll ] Introduction : Earlier this month, Jerry Pinto’s 2012 novel Em and the Big Hoom was awarded the Windham-C...

Quotes from the bestseller machine

[ My latest Forbes Life column, with selections from the "Craft of the Bestseller" session I moderated at JLF this January ] If yo...

Nitpicking about a piece on Oscar-winning actors

Happened to read this piece about "10 actors who won Oscars for the wrong movie". I know this is the sort of lightweight list thi...

On Aligarh, Carol, rear-window ethics, and a love that whispers its name

[ My latest Mint Lounge column ] Spend a few minutes in a hall showing Todd Haynes’s Carol , then move to one where Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh ...

“Venom, to thy work!” How Agatha Christie committed her murders

[ Did this review for Scroll ] I don’t know what the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot would make of noisy, crowded, grimy Ludhiana, but it w...

Impossible is nothing: three wise men write a book about Amar Akbar Anthony

[ Did this piece for the Hindu Literary Review ] Manmohan Desai’s 1977 film Amar Akbar Anthony , one of Hindi cinema’s most beloved entertai...

A social network and a sharp knife: on Arun Krishnan's Antisocial

[ Did this review for Business Line newspaper ] Early in Arun Krishnan's novel Anti s ocial , the narrator-protagonist Arjun Clarkson is...

Hrishi-da and Guddi at JNU

Anyone in Delhi on March 16 who is interested in watching Guddi and/or listening to me pontificate about “the world of Hrishikesh Mukherjee...

Little heroes and other patriots - thoughts on Neerja and Airlift

[ My latest Mint Lounge column ] The first two months of 2016 have brought us a surprisingly large number of films with either “Ishq” or “Lo...