Belated thoughts on Manjhi, mountains, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Ketan Mehta

How absurd the Dashrath Manjhi tale is, and how overwrought it would seem if it had been thought up by a writer of fiction. Think about it....

Too much order in the court

[This is the first entry in my new fortnightly film column, "Above the Line", for Mint Lounge ] In conversations about the New Hin...

The voices of hunted lions: a conversation with Karthika Nair about her Mahabharata in poetry

[Did a version of this Q&A for Scroll ] Intro: Karthika Nair’s new book Until the Lions is a powerful retelling of the Mahabharata tha...

V Shantaram, the man who saw it all: a book about a pioneering filmmaker

[ Did this book review for Mint Lounge ] Madhura Pandit Jasraj’s book about her father V Shantaram contains a story that sounds apocryphal ...

The sex film that wasn't - on Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Sabse Bada Sukh

Another, shorter excerpt from the Hrishikesh Mukherjee book appears in Scroll today: here is the link . This one is more critical in tone, s...

About an image inset

The first physical copy of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee book reached me last week. My reaction in these situations is to not want to open the th...

On Upendranath Ashk's गिरती दीवारें (now in translation as Falling Walls)

[ Did a version of this review for Open magazine ] The announcement that an Important Book has arrived usually makes me wary, because publis...