Features

There’s a beeline for India – from publishers of magazines and newspapers to manufacturers of garments and textiles. Not quite without reason – its ever-growing affluent section is bigger in numbers than many European nations put together. If you care to look beyond the obvious, you will realise those making this beeline have not just been taken in by speculative hype alone. Numbers scream realities, and the numbers indicate that the Indian fashion market is huge, it is growing, it is vibrant...

Had he not become the leader of the dreaded insurrectionist organisation, he would probably have been serving in a mission. The last time that negotiations were held between the Indian government and Naga guerrillas in the late Sixties, playing a key role was a suave young man in his mid-30s. Another 30 summers later, the same man is set to play a bigger role in the current negotiations. Meet the soft-spoken, deeply-religious chairman of the underground National Socialist Council of Nagaland...

The roots of Indian cinema are almost as old as those of the medium itself. Within eight months of taking Paris by storm, the touring agents of Lumiere brothers' Cinematographer landed on the shores of India. On July 7, 1896, The Times of India carried an advertisement heralding the arrival of "the marvel of the century" and "wonder of the world". Four screenings took place that historic evening at Watson's Hotel in Bombay (now Mumbai). The entry fee was one Rupee. The show received an...

“We have reached a time when we must open warfare on mediocrity, greyness and lack of expressiveness and make creative inquiry a rule in cinema.” His oeuvre rests on this simple rule, which lies framed in his study. On the wall opposite is a poster with a pigeon nesting on tangled strips of film. And for Buddhadeb Dasgupta, too, his concerns zoom through the mesh of life to explore the inexorable truth of life and living. But, as Dasgupta himself says, “If creative inquiry is a rule for cinema...

From guns to roses, it has been one long haul for the flint-hearted man. His on-screen, granite-faced, monosyllabic tough guy persona once prompted a critic to assign him to the Mount Rushmore school of acting. As a producer-director, they said, he could not think beyond his guns. So when he mused aloud, “I just do my thing… eventually you do something that someone thinks is okay,” cinema savants did not give it a penny’s thought. But this turned out to be one Cassandra’s prophecy when the US...