Mumbai-based artiste Dev Mehta wants to use modern art to inspire people to think and see things differently. This is his story.
On the occasion of World Theatre Day, let's understand what keeps the arts scene ticking in India and how the same can be improved.
'Not only will Peter, Indrani, Sanjeev be making twice monthly trips to the sessions court for many years, so will their family, their lawyers and the journalists covering the case, becoming almost like bittersweet friends, as large portions of their lives play out there.'
The present tax revenue of the state is Rs 120,000 crore.
'Acting is my first love but dance is my passion.' Madhuri Dixit gets ready for her next dance reality show, So You Think You Can Dance: Ab India Ki Baari.
A stable government at the Centre and its plans to set up smart cities has revived investors' interest in the country with Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore set to emerge as hot investment destinations in 2015.
First person account: To say the entire stretch is ripe for a stampede is putting it mildly.
Pragya Singh Thakur remained at the back of the courtroom during Tuesday's framing of the charges, her face serene, quite different from the fiery person one read about or saw on television. But once the day's proceedings were over and she was wheeled out, the sadhvi decided she actually was very keen to meet the media and headed right out into the melee, says Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com.
Como Stocks & Properties is into property development.
'I doubt very much if I will ever move on from his music, as I have from so much else through the years,' says Aakar Patel.
Sameer Buddha was just the kind of witness Indrani's lawyer Sudeep Pasbola dislikes. Someone, who had temporarily dumped his memory before entering the court. He answered most questions, one after another, one after another, one after another, with a monotonous, deadpan: 'I don't remember.' 'I don't remember.' 'I don't remember.'
Indrani dressed in a short purple kurta and leggings, with a bandhini green-purple chunni, sindhoor glowing in her mang, was receiving a drubbing from her lawyers for the facts she had revealed before the court on Tuesday while arguing the rejoinder to her bail application. She was insisting: "But he asked me for a motive!"
Dr Gupta handled Shivade's blows with quite some equanimity... So it was often only Shivade down in the mud pit, egging and enticing the doctor to join the fight, while Dr Gupta cautiously kept to the sidelines, barely stepping a toe into the mud.
Judge Jagdale halted Dr Gupta's testimony several times because he felt it had neither order nor direction. Tightly controlling his irritation, his lips compressed, the judge explained as patiently as he could: "What he has done in this case should come (out in his testimony) in a lucid manner. You eat chapati and then rice. You cannot eat half a chapati and then have rice and then eat half a chapati..." "He is not a witness of facts. He is an expert witness. Either he is not prepared. Or you are not prepared."
'A man, probably a lawyer, in black trousers and a white shirt, next to me, was talking to a woman in white.' 'My stock-taking stopped frozen in its tracks.' 'I was sitting almost right next to Indrani Mukerjea.'
'People wondered aloud why she had given up on the aging, getting-day-by-day-more-infirm avatar. And was freshly blooming.'
The night before Sheena was allegedly killed, 'Indrani Madam instructed me to not send anyone up to her flat.' 'She told me to especially not allow Rahul Mukerjea.'
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports on the Sheena Bora Trial.
It will be his fifth birthday in jail as an undertrial. He was arrested two days before his birthday in 2015. Tuesday also marked Peter's fourth year in jail.
Judge Jagdale, with a severe expression shadowing his face, looked sharply at Manoj Patil, Airtel's nodal officer, and told him plainly: "It is difficult to digest what you are saying (about) giving call data, but not giving call timings and durations."
'Give him a chance to live,' Peter's lawyer told the court.
Back to Sheena Bora's grave, via e-time travel
Kamal Haasan's unrivalled make up skills, Jack Nicholson's haunting imagery, Asha Parekh's life as a Hit Girl and the surprise package of Beauty and the Beast, it's all there in Sukanya Verma's super filmi week.
On Thursday, Indrani will be obligated to change into the green uniform sari she receives visitors in, as per jail rules, and meet the gentlemen from the income tax department. She may also at some point on Thursday video conference with Delhi in the INX Media-Karti Chidambaram case where she might become an approver.
This week was the first time Peter and Indrani appeared in court no longer married, footloose and fancy free once again, even if in jail.
'I am an old man. 64 years... Never used influence.' 'I am not a politician or a criminal. What influence?' 'Retired. I could not protect myself even (from fabricated charges)?' 'Have no money now either.' 'I don't want to die in custody in disrepute.'
The close-onto four years (since November 2015) Peter has spent in Arthur Road jail, central Mumbai, in judicial custody, have taken their toll, lending him a bit of a melancholy stoop, a laborious gait and a tired face, turning him prematurely into a much older man than his nearly 64 years. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
What happened within the last 40 years that turned this society from secular democratic to Hindu right-wing that clench their collective fists of spiritual nobility against the fictional enemy that never was? The internet happened, says Vinay Menon.
Clusters of policemen and television journalists alertly anticipated the arrival of Mumbai's joint commissioner of police, who, it was confirmed by most people I asked, does not visit court often. No one could remember when they had last heard of Deven Bharti appearing as a witness in a murder trial.
Pasbola had a number of queries about the nails of the corpse found at Gagode Khurd. Did it have nails? Nails, in a case of strangulation, are key because they often have particles and skin beneath them to show the victim had been grasping something as s/he was strangled.
A mere pair of shoes sets off the kind of harsh condemnation Indrani draws in these corridors of justice. That she being a woman who killed her daughter -- never mind that she is an undertrial and the crime has not yet been proven -- apart from making her an object of curiosity, also makes her, by perception, more evil than the men that flood these corridors, facing trial for similar or worse crimes.
Indrani exclaimed excitedly, her face lighting up like a little girl's: "I know him soo0o well." Sanjeev Khanna, Accused No 2, jokingly suggested to Badami: "Influencing the witness!" Badami retorted good humouredly: "She can't influence witnesses. She can only influence you and Peter."
'If I have to write a letter I will give it to the media. They will put it out.'
The warmest reception came from his soon-to-be ex wife Indrani, who on spying him getting out of the lift, muttered an "Oh dear!" and walked over to him, trailed by her police guards, wreathed in high-wattage smiles.
Indrani is easily the most striking woman arriving in the court complex from jail on trial days. For those who don't know who she is, there is absurd puzzlement written large on faces when they bump into her. When she reaches or leaves the premises, one notices heads swivelling in jaw-dropping curiosity, as did a pair of transsexual undertrials who crossed her path at the last hearing of 2018, who were, not surprisingly, a less unusual sight than Indrani.
Her elfin face could be seen and once more after many days the victim of this murder had a face and a presence.
He is, at the closing of 2018, a man quite different from the Peter Mukerjea who entered judicial custody three-and-a-half years ago. He is a man not yet convicted of a crime, but already suffering for it, like the hundreds that enter these courts every day and the thousands Peter shares jail space with in a central Mumbai prison.
'When the forensics have collapsed, approver is clearly proved to be a liar from the beginning to the end... Does the prosecution genuinely believe that we ought to remain in judicial custody despite showing that their own story is not being corroborated by evidence, for another 192 witnesses?'
'It is perhaps kind of easy to see why Peter and the police clash.' 'The obvious air of entitlement that emanates from him, maybe unknowingly, probably gets the goat of the policemen.'
So concluded a day in court that saw a woman accused of murder don a fresh role of heroine of the moment. Even Bollywood couldn't have come up with such a curious twist.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances