'I am the undiscovered Julia Roberts of India. They haven't figured it out yet.' Kalki Koechlin gets talking.
'It's very expensive for a girl to become an actress. I remember I was nominated at all the award shows for Tanu Weds Manu, and conscientiously, like a new actress, I attended all of them and I was bankrupt by the end of it! I had to find a costume stylist, a hair stylist, a makeup stylist...!' Ronjita Kulkarni/Rediff.com gets inside Swara Bhaskar's mind.
Who was Mohammad Azharuddin? More crucially, *what* was he? Those are precisely the questions that, as the end credits roll after 132 minutes of run-time, remain unanswered, feels Prem Panicker.
In his massive election rallies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi often caught voters fancy promising that each individual would get Rs 15-20 lakh in his bank account if he came to power.
Article 370 is a golden cage that keeps Kashmiris trapped in a stifling environment, deters other Indians from investing in the state perpetuating its economic penury and expressly hinders the understanding of India; all under the false premise of preserving a narrow parochial identity, says Vivek Gumaste.
'Why is it that we are so forgiving of the glaring problems in grand multi-starrers like Dil Dhadakne Do,' asks Sreehari Nair, 'but when a small film with a truly personal vision seeks our approval, we analyse it through a prism of formal perfection?' 'With its Seinfeldian humour, episodic structure and performers who play off each other's energies, Meeruthiya Gangsters goes farther than most Hindi movies.'
The author meets the brains behind Unocoin, the first Indian Bitcoin exchange and merchant processor in India to have raised international funding.
Born and abandoned in Mumbai, reborn in Sweden, Erika Sandberg says she is Indian on the outside but feels Swedish on the inside. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel narrates her tale.
As Narendra Modi files his nomination in Varanasi, Praful Bidwai believes 'a straight contest against Priyanka would have put Modi on the defensive and forced him to concentrate on Varanasi.'
'The BJP suddenly seems vulnerable. This is not entirely surprising. In the past too, governments and leaders who won a thumping Lok Sabha majority lost popularity in a matter of months... The by-polls results shows that a degree of disenchantment with the Modi government is setting in,' says Praful Bidwai.
Muzzling NGOs is unbecoming of a democracy. Self-confident democracies encourage, indeed applaud, the involvement of citizens' associations, including NGOs, in social and political decision-making and development planning. Instead, our paranoid government bullies and terrorises them, says Praful Bidwai.
'The Modi government's lurch toward America has not brought it any dividends so far. The Western world is simply not in a position to make big investments in India... India needs to take a leap of faith vis-a-vis China.'
Mumbai visarjans take place with military precision. Thousands and thousands of Ganpatis are immersed across 11 days with hardly an incident. And minimum traffic disruption given the scale of the festival. Meet the the folks who ensure visarjans happen smoothly and efficiently.
'It is just that we have our standards so low that anybody looks good now.' 'His sort of extremely terminological exactitude is a serious problem. He doesn't seem to understand the difference between exclusive economic zones, territorial waters...' 'I am expecting a lot of confusion because of this... Unless Parrikar starts going into the depth of the problems, he is only going to compound the problem rather than resolve it.'
'The partnership of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi has made their biggest mistake. They have been very successful for their party in the last two years, but this batting pair has made the biggest political mistake of their life so far, which is calling Kejriwal a chor. It will backfire on them.'
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