By Vidya Pradhan

If you had any doubts about the survival of the film noir genre in Bollywood, this is the movie to put them all to rest. Mithya, meaning ‘fiction’, is another of director Rajat Kapoor’s eccentric, low-budget experiments and for the right viewer, this tragic comedy (or comic tragedy)is a worthwhile watch. More »

Q.  I am stuck with high property taxes on my house bought at the peak of the real estate market. Now that my house is worth less, is there any way I can get a relief on my taxes? More »

(Also read "A returning Indian entrepreneur reflects", an excellent article on moving back to India and The Big Move back, which talks about the practical aspects of moving back)

By Isheeta Sanghi

Delhi is one of the most fascinating places in the world,weather wise. It’s deathly hot in the summer, and its winters are frighteningly cold. On one such winter morning in Delhi, on my way to college in an auto I experienced something I had never experienced before. I was at a stop sign, and a young girl with dirty brown hair, and big curious brown eyes walked up to me. It was not that I hadn’t seen girls like her before, or that it was the first time someone had come up to me in an auto and asked me for money, but this time it was different. It’s almost as though the numbness of my fingers reached my heart, and I was able to feel just how numb it had become.

For years now, I have been coming to India for vacation and staying with extended relatives. They all seem to have one common mantra from Delhi to Bangalore “don’t look at their faces.” 'Their', in this case, referring to the beggars on the street. I never questioned this because I wanted to avoid the awkward situation of staring at a complete stranger, and them staring back. But this morning was different; I looked into this young girl’s eyes, and looked past her smile. I saw her parents on the sidewalk, or at least what they call a sidewalk in Delhi, and saw them covered in torn blankets, and rotting clothes. I saw their health and spirit deteriorating, and me not being able to do anything about it. When I saw this, it was like all of a sudden my problems had no place in the world. I didn’t have the right to complain about the cold because I am fortunate enough to run the heater the whole night, and afford blankets that make me sweat so much that I have to pull it off at times. What seem like little, or insignificant things are actually the most important in life. And if one wants to discover that, India is the place to come to. The disparity between the rich and the poor is just horrific, and it’s probably the only place on earth where the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor can live on the same street, side by side. More »

By Vidya Pradhan

First there was the single. Those of us over a certain age (ahem!) can remember stacks of shiny black vinyl discs with songs by Donny Osmond and Cliff Richards scratching away at 45 RPM on our parents’ LP players. As technology improved and made it possible to fit more than one song per side, the album was born.

Ever since, customers have been bound to this format, even as the delivery mechanism moved from an LP to a CD. Released from the constraint of quality, record labels have been bundling mediocre pieces with hit songs, to the utter frustration of the buyers.

No longer; thanks to the internet, the music industry has done a 360. Today the single, in the form of the mp3, has made a comeback as distributors like ITunes and Amazon Music make single songs available to the listening public.

This method of marketing music and the role of the internet in disseminating it have opened the doors for struggling musicians as they reach a wider audience without the support of established record labels. One such Indian-American musician, Ananda Sen, has taken the movement to its logical conclusion. On his website, he offers one free song per week for download, committing to a 52-week cycle of songs. More »

By Rohini Mohan 

Jodha Bai, Queen of Hindustan and wife of the greatest of Mughal emperors, Akbar,  may not have ever existed, claim  some historians. Others claim that she was his daughter in law and not his wife. Ashutosh Gowarikar’s latest blockbuster Jodha-Akbar starts off with this disclaimer – but goes on to convince us that we have indeed been remiss to  ignore this great love story which may well have shaped Mughal history. More »

 By Aarti Johri

It was over a year ago. A friend and I were involved in a project with some young children that used a tie- dye kit. Our preteen girls were also participating. “Here”, my friend said, “your daughter can also tie-dye something for herself; this would look great in that blue”. I looked at what she was tossing me, a Hanes sleeveless T-shirt. I realized my otherwise brilliant friend had some idiosyncrasies, this probably being an example of them. I politely smiled and scrambled out of the situation, puzzled nonetheless why she would give my daughter an undershirt, obviously purchased for her son.

More »

Director Nagesh Kukunoor’s oeuvre has been relatively small but I would love to see someone come out with a “Best of..” DVD set. In it would be Iqbal, arguably the most uplifting of his movies and Dor, a quiet but polished look at two women brought together by sad circumstances. I would also include Teen Deewarein, a thriller with twists galore, Bollywood Calling, a sly look at the movie industry,  and of course Hyderabad Blues, his debut film, which invigorated many viewers sick of mainstream pap dished out by Bollywood.

Not all of Kukunoor’s movies are consistently engaging. Rockford was pretty dull, even for those familiar with the boarding school environment, and Hyderabad Blues 2 stretched the arranged marriage joke a bit too far. Bombay to Bangkok, though being way better than some of the other movies in the theaters right now, falls in this category. More »

Navin Gulia severely injured his neck and spine while clearing an obstacle in a competition at the Indian Military Academy, where he was in the final term as a gentleman cadet.He was 22 years old then. Refusing to let his disability define him, he decided to conquer the world in a wheelchair.

He created a modification kit to allow him to drive a car and has notched up over 200,000 kms driving up the Himalayas in Uttaranchal, Himachal and Ladakh. He has driven up to the Khardung La (pass) in Ladakh, then the highest motorable pass in the world. He has also practised flying powered hang-gliders. Here he writes about his experiences driving from Delhi to the Indo-Pak Border.

Growing up, deserts have caught my fancy a number of times. From movies like ‘Omar Mukhtar – lion of the desert’ to the Hindi classic ‘Lamhe’ and books and stories on deserts. I had no real experience of the desert except what I had read. Going to Jaisalmer, the essence of deserts in India and the beginning of Thar, had been my fantasy for a long time.
When I got a call from the Ability Foundation to go on an assignment to Jodhpur, I grabbed it. Jaisalmer was 300 kms away and the India Pakistan border another 140kms. More »

By Vidya Pradhan 

After being sneered at, looked down upon, and generally treated as the shameless tramp of the global movie making industry, Bollywood is being given more than a modicum of respect these days. Even the venerable Economist gave it a block, pointing to the increasing interest from producers and financiers from Hollywood in the now-legitimized, mafia-free industry.

Hollywood is courting Indian film producers: Disney, Viacom, News Corporation and Sony Pictures have all done deals with Bollywood companies in the past few years, and within the next month Disney plans to increase its stake in UTV Software, the parent of an ambitious young film studio in Mumbai, from 14.9% to as much as 30%.

UTV's symbol of a tri-colored rangoli may be quite familiar to movie-goers even in the US. Lately the company,which is now the second largest studio in the country, has produced movies like Parineeta and Taare Zameen Par. Ronnie Screwvalla, who runs UTV, pledges to make movies with more depth and less song and dance, a development for which we surely have the multiplex phenomenon to thank. The economics of multiplexes makes financing low-budget movies with lesser known stars possible and loyal audiences in the immigrant heavy areas of UK and USA allow for lavish spending in special-effects heavy mainstream masala.

Suddenly movie-making in Bollywood has become less like a lottery and more like a casino, where the house always wins. If that strains credibility a little here's more proof in an article in Variety.

Iconic financier George Soros has paid $100 million for a stake in Indian movies, gaming and Internet conglom Reliance Entertainment.

He is picking up a 3% stake in the privately held operation controlled by the billionaire industrialist Anil Dirubhai Ambani's Reliance ADAG. Deal values Reliance Entertainment at some $3.3 billion, making it the most valuable entertainment company in the fast-developing territory.

Reliance Entertainment controls the Adlabs group, which is India's biggest film processor, and in recent years has diversified to become a front-running movie production and theater operation.

If UTV is the second largest studio in India, Adlabs labels itself the largest entertainment conglomerate in the country. Originally a processing studio, it now produces, markets and distributes movies and television serials and owns over 150 theaters all over the country. It also recently became a majority stakeholder of Siddhartha Basu's Synergy Communications, a leading player in quizzes and game shows in India for almost two decades.

Synergy is probably the right term to describe what is happening in Bollywood today. There has never been a shortage of talent, only the constraints of a perhaps regressive audience. With globalization comes an unfettering of the creative process and it is not surprising that given the right kind of money and connections, Indian producers and directors are making a foray into Hollywood. UTV has co-produced two movies with News Corporation's Fox Filmed Entertainment, and this year the two studios will release “The Happening”, a thriller directed by M. Night Shyamalan which is costing them about $28m each. 

Indian directors have already crossed over. Mira Nair had her heroine Becky Sharp( played by Reese Witherspoon) dance to a Bollywood number in Thackeray's ultra-British Vanity Fair. Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth had more than a little bit in common with Shashikala and Lalita Pawar, two scheming 'villy's' from the golden years of Bollywood. Can Mission Impossible 4 with Hrithik Roshan be far behind? 

The dust from the Super Tuesday storm appears to have settled ( or has it?) and it is time to look at the results of your vote.

Candidates(with 99% of the precincts reporting)(numbers courtesy cnn.com):

Democrats:

Hillary Clinton %age of vote: 52%; Number of delegates pledged so far: 233

Barack Obama %age of vote: 42%; Number of delegates pledged so far: 172

John Edwards %age of vote: 4%; Number of delegates pledged so far: 0

( We will keep updating these numbers as we get them..with provisional ballots still to be counted, it might take a while for the delegate count to add up to 370). Incidentally, the mini poll we had up on the site predicted the percentage vote difference as well as the best pollster out there. We had Hillary up 56% to 44%!

Republicans:

John McCain %age of vote: 42%; Number of delegates: 116

Mitt Romney %age of votes: 34%; Number of delegates: 3 

Mike Huckabee %age of votes: 12%; Number of delegates: 0 

( Remember the Republicans operate on a winner-take-all system. For an explanation of delegate allotment, see here.) 

Propositions on the Ballot: ( for explanations on what the propositions were, see here)

Prop 91: FAILED 58.1% to 41.9%

Prop 92: FAILED 57.3% to 42.7% 

Prop 93: FAILED 53.5% to 46%

Prop 94-97: PASSED  55.8% to 44.2%