'Aditya Chopra says the only time Shah Rukh acts is when he laughs' 'I never realised this, but when I see him, I realise that he has never laughed.' 'So I asked him why doesn't he laugh.' 'He said he didn't know, that he never thought about it.'
If the classical language is to live in India, its teachers and fans must separate their love for the language from that for the country or their religion, feels Arundhuti Dasgupta
U R Ananthamurthy on the importance of keeping alive our regional languages.
'My grandmother taking me to the jamatkhana was like a different world.' 'Like I had a key to a door which no one else seemed to have.' 'She doesn't take me anymore because she says I'm an embarrassment!'
Straight talk from Femina Miss India Earth 2011 Hasleen Kaur.
'In today's India very few would, of course, stand Basavanna's test. This led Professor Kalburgi to not only take on casteist and conservative forces in general, but also some powerful conservatives among Lingayats.' 'Conservatives found him polarising and some researchers disagreed with his speculations while admiring his scholarship, but he posited that culture studies and historians have to perforce join the dots, speculate, interpret, interpolate, extrapolate and take leaps to make progress even if some of them later turn out to be wrong.' Shivanand Kanavi salutes Professor M M Kalburgi, the scholar who was assassinated in Dharwad on Sunday, August 30.
'We have made no effort in recent years to build a national opinion on Kashmir amongst political parties.' 'At least we should speak as one country.' 'It has been a failure of our foreign policy that we have not been able to convince world opinion that something needs to be done about Pakistan.'
'Our Indian culture system is very family oriented.' 'We value and respect the decisions of our parents to a great extent.' 'That can be a pro or con.' 'It's up to the parents to gauge how much motivation, pressure or space a child needs.' 'Every child is different.' 'We are all unique and that is what I intend to drive home to parents.'
'There is no way you can view the movie from a distance, from a moral high ground, and get to its core.' 'To truly appreciate what Anurag Kashyap is trying to do here, you may have to lose a part of yourself to it, first,' says Sreehari Nair.
'My mother has one complaint -- I die in all of my films. She has told me to stop dying now.'
In the documentary The World Before Her, a young girl has to submit to the will of her father for a most gut-wrenching reason: 'He let me live... I am a girl... but he let me live.' Is that reason enough, asks Suparn Verma.
Did you know the world's youngest director is an Indian?
'Hrithik Roshan is in an awkward situation.' 'The world is saying that Hrithik's wife left him because he had an affair with my client.'
Aishwarya Rai confirmed in her September 27, 2002, interview to The Times Of India: 'Salman and I broke up last March, but he isn't able to come to terms with it.'
Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Bajirao Mastani has ruffled quite a few feathers among the descendants of the Peshwa and his Muslim wife.
'We have 200 million families. Parents have the responsibility to make their children righteous -- where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character.' 'Only three people can give a good citizen before s/he turns 17. Father, mother, the spiritual environment and the primary school teacher.' President A P J Kalam on India becoming a developed country by 2020-2022, the heroes he admired; how 90 per cent of India's space programme is intended for the people and the individual's potential to become unique.
Goli is a special child, born on 26/11 at the Cama hospital in Mumbai while the terrorists were raining bullets outside. Six years later, Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com finds a family determined to give their children the best life they can afford.
'By resorting to divisive issues, the BJP is giving the impression that even if it is voted to power it won't do anything new to give Bihar a facelift. It will repel voters with the belief that the BJP can't do anything without communal polarisation as its core ideology. This is sad and unfortunate,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
The book Effective People by Dr TV Rao features inspiring examples of success icons from across the world.
On Kishore Kumar's 86th birthday, we revisit a Rediff.com exclusive special by Pritish Nandy on the late legend.
Anwesha Bhattacharya-Arya writes an open letter to the President on the sorry state of affairs in India.
'We know many things are going to happen.' 'People should be preparing for sea level rise, for increased cyclonic activity, for drought.' 'One reason I wrote the book is to alert people to the dangers that they face.' 'For example, Mumbai faces enormous threat.'
Iconic rights activist Irom Sharmila on the highs and lows of her long fast, why she gave it up and her plans.
Neeraj Pandey, who has written and directed the films A Wednesday and Special 26, has written a novel called Ghalib Danger.
'There is nothing wrong in accepting Rama as a God.' 'You will not get to read a story as deep as Valmiki's Ramayana in which he talks about complex relations, strong emotions, pain, desertion and unconditional love. Whether you depict Rama as a human being or a divine person, the Ramayana is an epic with a great human story.' 'It is not religious intolerance at all; this is part of political power and polarisation. A religious person will never act intolerant towards another religion.'
Driving a Tata Nano covered with banners about his son's killing by the Mumbai Police, Kundan Prasad Singh is fighting his first election to get justice for a dead son.
Shubham Kumar Gautam, son of a farmer and a Super 30 student, recounts how, in a journey laced with perseverance, grit and determination, he achieved what seemed impossible.
Terrorism and Afghanistan were the focus points of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov on his first visit to Central Asia.
Sudheendra Kulkarni pays tribute to friend, poet and Dalit activist Namdeo Dhasal who passed into the ages on Wednesday.
'John Lasseter gave me such good advice. He said the reason why he wanted me to tell the story was because it was about my dad and me. He said if it is a father and son story, it will relate universally.' Star Pixar animator Sanjay Patel tells Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com the back story behind his new film, Sanjay's Super Team, which features Hanuman, Vishnu and Durga as superheroes.
'Many sepoys fought with distinction, winning some of the first Victoria Crosses to be awarded to Indians; and indeed, as in any army fighting under such inhumane conditions -- standing in the freezing sludge, with shrapnel tearing through bodies and being subjected to gas attacks -- some buckled under pressure.'
'If you go up to an average American or British citizen, and tell them you are a Muslim, they look at you suspiciously. It's not a good feeling,' Saif Ali Khan tells Sonil Dedhia.
One of India's greatest actors -- someone who acted in 14 Satyajit Ray films -- doesn't get good movie roles anymore.
'They don't always agree with our governments, their teachers or their parents, but it is the conviction of their ideas, and their determination to share them with the world that, I believe, is one of the greatest sources of hope for our planet.' 'The colonisation of space, understanding the very building blocks of matter and the universe, utilising our understanding of the human genome to conquer disease -- these are the tasks waiting for a fellowship of minds to realise new triumphs in our collective destiny.'
'Muslims, like people of all other faiths, are quite comfortable with the idea of nationalism and democracy today. But are they following Islam in its spirit? That is a different question.'
'Over one million people served in various battlefronts during World War I. And yet, even today, we know so very little about them.' 'It is absolutely essential to acknowledge this part of India's colonial history,' Santanu Das tells Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com
The elements are all aligned to make India a global powerhouse, says IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde.
