Amol Shahane remembers the first time he was introduced to St Valentine.
'If you are a professional journalist, don't ever think that your work is going to bring in revolution or that you are going to change the world. That job is best left to the revolutionaries,' M V Kamath, the legendary journalist who passed away on October 9, told Nitin Gokhale.
Arthur J Pais charmed her and exasperated her. But, says Vaihayasi Pande Daniel as she bids him goodbye, it is the 'irrevocability' of death that 'stingingly puts into focus what you never realised you would miss terribly.'
'I've watched Farhan Akhtar's films, and admired him. Then when I saw him in person, I was overwhelmed.' Candid confessions from Aditi Rao Hydari.
'Indrani gave a mirthless laugh on spying The Suitcase, from the accused enclosure and, in sign language, gestured the impossibility of anyone fitting in such a small bag.'
Sukanya Verma revisits Gulzar's Ghalib and finds Barsaat, and Free Love!
Suchismita Banerjee recounts the wonderful time she shared with her parents as a child.
Sudha Murty has various roles -- philanthropist, author, teacher, wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt -- and she revels in each one of them, discovers Savera R Someshwar.
Looking at how the idea of gift giving and taking on Diwali has changed
Piku is a film with tremendous heart, raves Raja Sen.
Here's a look at some of the other darbars in the hard-to-please city of Amritsar, known for its appetite for food and drink and its insolent humour:
Wendell Rodricks's passion for fashion has its roots in food, he reveals in this heartwarming essay.
Hasee Toh Phasee takes a familiar premise -- two people on the brink of tying the knot and introduces a third party to cause expected stir. Only it doesn't happen like it used to, writes Sukanya Verma.
A Ganesh Nadar and Saisuresh Sivaswamy, on the campaign trail with H Vasanthakumar, the Congress's businessman candidate in Tamil Nadu.
There it lay, a photograph on the desk under a stapler, and later a stamp pad, forgotten, done with, like its subject, a Mumbai Metro One employee who vanished overnight.
'People don't talk about any role that my father did -- it is always Gabbar Singh. He regretted this. He would tell me, 'I started at 25 floors and couldn't go any higher because I had started too high.'
Rajkumari Kaul's death over the weekend brings back memories of phone conversations at a time when landline numbers were still in vogue, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was still to become prime minister, remembers Girish Nikam.
'Anyone who disagrees with this and says it depends on perspective is trying to hide their lust because it is socially unacceptable to think free.' Candid talk with Akshay Kumar.
'I had seen Waqt, starring Balraj Sahniji, and I can never forget it. There is a happy family and an earthquake later, everything is gone. That movie got stuck in my head. How one man loses his entire family and becomes a pauper. The same thing happens in Airlift.' Akshay Kumar, and his lovely leading lady Nimrat Kaur discuss their latest film.
PepsiCo India's new CEO admits to being an ardent follower of the world's management gurus and they clearly mould his outlook.
'In the merry-go-round of Indian cricket, amid abhorrent match-fixing scandals and incessant politicking, Ravi Shastri is a multifaceted personality who, when called upon, can don any hat with ease.'
'The real problem that has affected Tarantino's films is not their amorality. On the contrary, it's their misplaced morality.' 'The basic pitches for his movies, off late, tackle such pre-resolved issues, that they don't quite allow his pop-culture sensibilities to hit a crescendo and instead reduces them to trinkets in service of broad movie prototypes.' 'Which means that neither history nor cinema triumphs.'
Mrinal Pande remembers Rajendra Yadav, one of the most prolific fiction writers and thinkers of Hindi literature in the recent times, who passed away on Monday.
'In the newsroom, the thought process is about understanding the story and trying to look beyond the obvious. The fiction-writing process is similar in many ways but more internal.'
'I don't prepare (for a character), I become it. I don't have to think about a character too much, I become it. I give a lot of attention to detailing. Once I become the character, I go and deliver the scene.' Aishwarya Rai Bachchan gives us an insight into her life.
'The best Indian movies today are ones that portray life as "something that doesn't end when the movies do".' 'There's no real arc to traverse or easy lessons to learn. And Irrfan and Nawazuddin -- who can both swerve a movie purely on the strengths of their instincts -- are just the perfect actors for this kind of movie sensibility,' says Sreehari Nair.
"They call me the Class 10 vice-chancellor," he says as his thin lips flirt with a smile. You almost feel that the tall man of spare build is being facetious. And then you see that his deep set eyes are not twinkling. There is a sense of the combative in them.
Lieutenant General J F R Jacob, Chief of Staff, Eastern Army Command during the 1971 war, reveals how, armed with only a draft surrender document and an aide, he made the Pakistani army led by Lieutenant General A A K Niazi surrender.
'I got to know things early in life.' On Childrens' Day, one of Hindi film industry's most memorable child -- Raju Shrestha - lets us into his life with a twinkle in his eye.
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