Aseem Chhabra picks the scenes that left him impressed this year.
Rajiv Gandhi would have turned 72 on August 20. Had he lived. On a humid night 25 years ago, the former prime minister of India was murdered in cold blood by an LTTE suicide bomber. Neena Gopal was an eyewitness to the assassination, and in this exclusive extract from her new book, The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, she reveals for the first time what she saw in Sriperumbudur that night.
'Dr Khobragade is now a Counsellor without any specific work responsibility at the PMI. There is not going to be any work for her at the mission at least for now. This is an interim measure to help her so she can get diplomatic immunity and get over this situation.'
'The worst that can happen to a cricketer is stay behind the National Stadium and not be able to use it. I went through a lot of things but it is past now,' said Shantakumaran Sreesanth after being cleared of all charges in the IPL spot-fixing scandal by a Delhi court.
Nikhil Lakshman remembers the times he spent with the legendary writer who passed into the ages six days before his 86th birthday.
National record holder Sudha Singh of Railways bettered her own meet mark while winning gold in the women's 3000m steeplechase on the third and penultimate day of the 53rd National Open Athletics Championships in Ranchi on Monday.
'Nobody laughed during the shooting. There were fights, swearing and what not. Tempers were high but the unit and the actors stayed on, and finally, the film was made. But it was like riding a wild horse!' Kundan Shah's last interview.
Is it just the glamour?
The Government of India and the Indian community in the United States have strongly condemned the arrest of Dr Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York. Some activists blamed the Indian government's failure, claiming that the issue with the domestic help, Sangeeta Richard, was not handled properly though the Indian authorities had faced two similar cases in New York earlier.
'2015 gave us a set of Hindi films that brought to light, the true uncorrupted joys of filmmaking even in their roughness.' 'Films which told us why we loved films in the first place. Films that were less ashamed of revealing their weakness and ones that took chances with audience expectations.'
The sight and sound of the Liril Girl set the tone for ads that work at a subliminal level, and captivates viewers even to this day.
Former editor of Femina magazine, Sathya Saran looks back at the Miss India pageant that changed the lives of two young women.
'We still look at films with A-listers.' 'There is change, but it's minor.' 'We still haven't learnt how to invest in stories.'
'That night -- when Gandhi won Best Picture at the 1983 Oscars -- belonged to India and it meant a lot to a young student like me, who was trying to establish his Indian identity among the Americans around him.' Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com, who worked as an extra on Richard Attenborough's acclaimed biopic, salutes the late legend.
Contracts with India-based domestic assistants for officials abroad have become a headache for the Indian government.
Workers' outfits staged a rally outside the Indian Consulate in New York to show support for Sangeeta Richard, whose allegations of low wages and exploitation led to the Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade. George Joseph reports
Devyani Khobragade, deputy consul general at the Indian consulate in New York, was arrested on charges that she allegedly presented fraudulent documents to the United States State Department in support of a visa application for an Indian national employed as a babysitter and housekeeper at her home in Manhattan.
'If at all,' says Suhasini Haidar, Foreign Affairs Editor, CNN-IBN, 'Devyani Khobragade is to avoid facing a full trial, the process of that negotiation must start immediately, for which the current acrimonious atmosphere must be improved. It is no more than the US was willing to do for Raymond Davis; the Italian government for its sailors; and India for Captain Sunil James and Vijayan in Togo. Devyani Khobragade is not accused of charges anywhere as serious they were, and whether Preet Bharara's office recognises it or not, she is a diplomat who represents a proud country that has taken the insult to her as a personal insult to the country.'
'At that time the Delhi police was reeling under various controversies. This case was more of an attention diversion.'
'The moment you increase the possibility of making a team winning or losing a game that's where match-fixing happens. And whenever match-fixing happens, it can only happen at the players' level. If a player is not fixed to perform a particular task then how can one generate money?'
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