Star-Crossed Romance: Devika Rani is in focus due to a play on her life and a book on the way. A superstar of her time, one of her biggest hits…

Losers’ Game: Rating: Three stars As a those-were-the-days trip, Nitesh Tiwari’s Chhichhore has its moments of youthful exuberance—though the sight of a bunch of boys in their briefs running about…

Squirrel On The Go: Shaili Sathyu and her Gillo Team is getting ready to get on to their Natak Bus and travelling to parts of Maharashtra—the group’s second such tour,…

Women United: Mainstream Bollywood movies tend either glamorize the hooker, or use the character to generate melodrama. In the cinema of the past, she was either waiting for the noble…

Deadly Funny: In India, funeral rituals are solemn affairs, and anyone who dares laugh would probably be socially boycotted. In the UK, of course nothing is sacred as far as…

Epic Bore:  Rating: Two stars It would be a challenge to encapsulate the plot of Saaho in a couple of lines, because it wouldn’t stretch that long. The Sujeeth film,…

Dead Man Laughing: The Gujarati production Aane Bhi Do Yaaro is the funniest play seen in recent times, and that’s saying a lot because there are so many comedies produced in…

There was a startling photograph seen a few days back, of female scientists sticking on mustaches and thick beards on their faces, in a symbolic gesture to be taken as…

Reasons To Live: Richard Roper’s debut novel, How Not To Die Alone, is about a loner, who reminds the reader of the lead characters in Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called…

Wicked Women: In common usage, the word chudail describes an aggressive or quarrelsome woman—could be said to be the Indian equivalent of bitch.  But the origins of the chudail (often…