'It was one of the greatest learnings in my life to see someone like the great Amitabh Bachchan go through such a tough phase.' 'He had been there, done it all and really didn't need to prove himself.' 'Yet, he channelised it all and came out with one of his best performances,' Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra tells Savera R Someshwar/Rediff.com in a fascinating conversation about the films he has made and the actors he has worked with.
'Mahatma Gandhi, even for those on the extreme Hindu Right who believe he founded the politics of Muslim 'appeasement', is suicidal to target,' asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Kriti Kharbanda spills the beans on what she thinks of PM Modi style.
A First Information Report was registered at Jyotinagar police station, in Jaipur, on Friday, to investigate allegations of match-fixing by Board of Control for Cricket in India president and Managing Director of India Cements Ltd N Srinivasan, and his son-in-law, Chennai Super Kings team principal Gurunath Meiyappan, for conspiring and executing the fixing of an Indian Premier League match on May 12, between Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals at the Sawai Man Singh stadium in Jaipur.
Details about the farmer who died at the AAP rally are emerging, including he was a champ at tying turban.s
'Some months before his death, when I had inquired about his health, he was annoyed that people assumed the worst.' '"I am not going anywhere," Rishi snapped as only he could.'
'This is not a moral but a political question yet its importance is likely to grow with every passing day,' says Karan Thapar.
'He listens to you and he will do exactly what you tell him to do.'
Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh is coming under increasing fire from his own party colleagues for quite a few reasons, says Anita Katyal
'You tell me without support, can the ABVP do these things? They are only doing these things because the central government is supporting them.'
'When a criminal assumes a new identity he think everybody knows them by that name only.' 'Criminals forget that the police are always hunting for them to put them in jail.'
Instead, increases in foreign-direct-investment levels; and reforms to make labour, land and capital more mobile.
Patel, 71, who was critical for a few days, was admitted to the Medanta hospital in Gurugram on November 15 after he developed complications. His son Faisal said he died at 3.30 am.
Dhoni, who turned a year older Sunday, shook a leg with daughter Ziva in the presence of wife Sakshi as his teammates, in his preferred minimalistic manner.
The PAC expressed its concern over anti-party activities indulged in by Gandhi and Khalsa. Both have been involved in the activities of certain outfits, opposed to aims and objectives of the AAP.
The Emergency greatly influenced the RSS' makeover from a fringe force in the Indian political imagination to one that could have its own man sworn in as prime minister in two decades' time. A riveting excerpt from Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil's India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-1977.
Rahul knew this was coming. That 'dirt' would be dug up.
If Irrfan could have been our finest professor of empirical philosophy, and Nawaz is our foremost poet of that space halfway between the gutter and the stars, then Jaideep Ahlawat has to be our greatest artist-scientist, asserts Sreehari Nair.
'The biggest danger is that majoritarianism is getting normalised, insidiously and overtly... We are bringing the worst, not the best in us... We are looking for new enemies - Muslims, urban Naxals, tukde tukde gang, some enemy or the other which keeps this majoritarian wheel turning,' says journalist Rajdeep Sardesai.
'All statue-building is an exercise in hubris, but Mr Adityanath's enterprise begs a question: Can a state with rampant child malnutrition and 325 children dying in a Gorakhpur hospital afford Rama's benediction?' asks Sunil Sethi.
'If anything, he is a fiscal hawk.' 'He has avoided fiscal profligacy completely for the past four years.' 'The fiscal deficits since 2014 are clear proof of this.' 'The point is not that it is not 3 per cent yet; it is that it is not 6, 7 or 8 per cent, which it could easily have been.' 'For this he needs to be congratulated.' 'He has recognised it no longer pays to spend other people's money to win elections,' points out T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Aamir Khan steps into Tom Hanks' shoes. Think it's a good fit?
'I worked as a cleaner at a store.' 'I worked as a security guard...' 'I have slept on footpaths.' '[I came to Mumbai with great difficulty.' 'I have not seen better people than I have in the film industry.' 'Nobody has helped me the way people have done for me here.'
To believe that the key job of his senior ministers is to ensure that his image be kept intact whatever be the outcome of his policies is to expect too much even of someone as ambitious as Narendra Modi, asserts Rashme Sehgal.
In her condolence message for Patel, who served as her political secretary for years and was the All India Congress Committee treasurer, party chief Sonia Gandhi said, 'In Shri Ahmed Patel, I have lost a colleague, whose entire life was dedicated to the Congress Party.'
The prayer service for Veeruji, who passed into the ages on May 27, was held at ISKCON, in Juhu, north west Mumbai.
'India's first and longest-serving prime minister created -- or at the very least imagined -- a modern, democratic nation-State of the 20th century,' says Sunil Sethi.
'I always wanted to play a negative character, so I was like why not play it with Mr Bhansali?' 'As they say, be careful what you wish for.' 'I wanted to play an antagonist and I got the most evil one ever.'
Though Indians were no strangers to scams, spectrum loss was beyond their wildest imagination.
The anti-CAA activist was slapped with a sedition case after his alleged speeches went viral on social media where he was heard speaking about "cutting off" Assam and the northeast from India. Earlier, he had been booked on similar charges by Aligarh police in Uttar Pradesh for a speech he delivered on the AMU campus.
Major Bikramjeet Kanwarpal succumbed to COVID-19 on May 1. After retiring from the Indian Army, the major became a successful actor in films and television. An old friend salutes a wonderful human being.
Cricket administration was among the many hats Arun Jaitley wore in public life and in his death, the players remembered the man who seamlessly juggled roles, and stood by them in their hour of need.
'What would be questioned next?' 'Will the Copernicus theory of the sun being the centre of the universe, or Newton's theory of gravity?' asks Veena Mani.
'I am learning good things and trying to avoid the bad. I am moving ahead with a positive attitude. That is my biggest achievement.'
'Some semi-literate lunkhead tweeting at Rs 2 per tweet from a dingy basement in Chennai or San Diego accomplishes nothing, but give hundreds of thousands of them a time, date, and talking points, and they can create a wall of sound -- a nonsensical wall, perhaps, but one that is heard, and that can occasionally prevail just because it's there,' says Mitali Saran.
'I have done so much work after the Mahabharat, but people still remember me as Duryodhan.'
'Mr Mehta's jousts with owners and politicians taught many in the trade that editorial freedom is not given, it has to be fought for daily, and seized, especially in these times when the borders between journalism and paid-for-content masquerading as the real thing has permeated almost every newspaper in the land barring a couple.'
