'The boy has remained so simple. Still wearing that sweater and light pants. He doesn't even have a decent pair of shoes! So much like one of us! How can we not give him another chance?' 'And what is Modi Sir doing? He changes clothes three times a day and wears designer clothes. He isn't the son of a simple chaiwallah we voted for.'
'I have made enough money in my life to live in the happiness of my gambit. I don't want to buy a jet plane, I don't want to live with an entourage. So my requirement of taking my wife and children to a foreign holiday in business class is not a worry.' R Madhavan is anything but a Saala Khadoos!
Kiran Kanojia lost her limb when two miscreants made away with her bag. But she hasn't let that stop her.
Raymond was one of the first to start organised apparel retail in India.
Here are edited excerpts from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's Kanimozhi's speech during which she pushed for sending the bill to a Select Committee, arguing that further examination was required to decide whether the age for punitive action should be reduced to 16 years from the current level of 18 years.
'The Indian and Israeli rabbis were singing a small departure song for brave little Moshe, who had spent many, likely, heartbreaking but bittersweet hours at this home of his babyhood, looking at the drawings his mother had made for him, that were still up in his room.'
From being noticed in a supporting role as her debut to Cannes glory, Richa Chadha has come a long way in Bollywood.
Hindi cinema seems readier than society to focus on women. It is not just rape one is talking about, though an act of rape and its consequent injustice unfolds most narratives. Suddenly women are central not just as problematic but as possibility, as agency, as alternative, feels Shiv Visvanathan.
If Pasbola seemed like he was testing Rai on his high school physics, Rai on the other hand, had relocated himself to a classroom of philosophy, offering beautifully inexact answers, arrived at after deep thinking.
Sarpanch leaders are changing Rajasthan for the girl child, says Rashme Sehgal.
'If some Europeans do not allow Muslims to assimilate into European national cultures, some Muslims also refuse to try and adopt and assimilate.'
'Some men and women did seek shelter in our dhaba but not one of them disclosed that they had been raped. They were in our dhaba for over two hours till such time as the cops arrived. If they had been stripped and raped, or had been lying the fields for a long period of time, they or the male members of their families should have spoken about it.'
Sreenivasan Jain explains how the Aam Aadmi Party excelled in the Delhi assembly polls
The endorsement career of India's megastar Amitabh Bachchan displays his relevance in diametrically opposite roles and product categories.
'If one thing seemed clear in this week of very uneven tennis in Melbourne though, the much celebrated golden age of tennis may be over.'
Meet Jasmeet Singh Sandhu who ranked third in the Union Public Service Commission exam this year.
'One of the director's primary jobs is to make sure that all the actors perform as if they are in the same movie, playing in the same band -- one is not acting in a different band than the other.'
The new PDP chief will have to work hard to keep everyone in the state happy.
A buoyant economic mood and tempting discounts, both online and offline, are fuelling a shopping frenzy this Diwali.
Sources claim that 68-70 per cent of the workers at Halol are permanent ones, while the balance is tilted towards contractual workers at Talegaon.
The Honda Navi ushers in an entirely new class of two-wheeler in the country. But will its radically different positioning prove to be its undoing too, or will it stand up tall against the wildly popular Honda Activa 3G, the scooter it shares its heart with?
Mamta Rawat is one among the thousands who were rendered homeless during the June 2013 Uttarakhand floods. Six months on, however, not much work on relocation or rehabilitation has started. And money is really not the issue.
The governments at the Centre and in the state were unprepared to handle the massive response to the large numbers of people, as they were not aware of the groundswell of public admonition that was against the Establishment, says N Sathiyamoorthy.
A Ganesh Nadar visits the village in Tamil Nadu that shot into national prominence in 1981 when half the Dalits there converted to Islam. He spoke to the Hindus and Muslims and came back with two very different stories.
One can expect that the formation of Telangana will have more positives than negatives. The 'Telangana effect' has already prompted demands for a separate Vidarbha and break up of Uttar Pradesh. This needs to be considered seriously as this can only lead to deepening governance, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.
'For Nitish Kumar the message is to be democratic. With the support of the BJP, he had suppressed criticism in Bihar. He would also need to change his highly authoritarian way of governance.' 'The Grand Alliance, given the decisive mandate in its favour, cannot afford to fail the people. They have a duty to make it a model for the rest of India,' says Apoorvanand.
'Mohammad Akhlaq's death isn't only about a Muslim being killed out of sheer communal bigotry, but also the denial of the Constitutional guarantees of "due process" under Article 21 and the freedom of choice,' says Shehzad Poonawalla, who has moved the National Commission for Minorities over the murder.
Aseem Chhabra gives us the top films that enriched his year.
'There are a lot of things to make the series The Night Of relevant.' 'The decision to make it -- not only South Asian, but Pakistani Muslim -- is intensively relevant with what's going on today.'
'The 17-year-old boy, who pulled out Nirbhaya's intestines, should have got the harshest punishment because he was not human at the time.' 'Instead, he was given a sewing machine and some money to have a new beginning!' 'Are we giving out incentives?' 'Are we telling our unemployed youth that if they do something like this, the government will give them jobs?'
Satyajit Ray. Films from Italy, Iceland and Albania feature on Aseem Chhabra's list.
Aseem Chhabra lists the elements that he loved and was pleasantly surprised by in the movies.
Many placement agencies are fly-by-night operators in New Delhi.
Often when I meet a new Indian friend, who is not aware of my background, he exclaims: "So many years in India! but why, why? I can't understand! My dream is to go to the States or Europe and you are living in 'this' country!" Claude Arpi, who was born a Frenchman, looks back on his 40 years in India.
And in the midst of it all, Jayalalithaa keeps the guessing game going, on her returning as chief minister and on calling for early assembly polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In spite of the glitches and scramble, the Mumbai Film Festival shaped into an enriching experience, feels Sukanya Verma.
'America's withdrawal from Vietnam was an inspiring moment for all of us. We believed that it was a glorious victory of ideology and spirit and as historic as the defeat of the Nazis exactly 30 years ago,' remembers Kumar Ketkar 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War.
'I kept begging the doctors to put my three year old on the ventilator. But the doctors and nurses kept saying no ventilator was available. When the breathing apparatus ultimately became available, it was too late.'
'A friend of mine was going through a midlife crisis with me, so we sat down and talked it out.' 'He said, you know, we are going through a midlife crisis. I asked him for how long it would last. He didn't know, so we tried to Google it but nobody had an answer.' Saurabh Shukla fields questions in his signature witty way.
