Articles
From 2011 Onwards
An English Drought
And escaping into the cloudbursts of Indian imagination
Role Moral
Effortlessly shuttling between romance and rage
A True Countrywoman
King Charles III must remember that royalty needs charisma to succeed
The Tribal Pursuit
The Murmu moment and cinema’s indebtedness to Adivasi culture
The Evil Eye
The evolution of curses in mythology and cinema
Mise-en-Soviet
Can Indian cinema make it big in Russia again?
Director’s Roar
The globalisation of South Indian cinema began with Rajamouli
Club Istanbul
Identity markers in a new Turkish series echo the melodrama of Hindi cinema
Holi in Films Is Full of Emotions – From the Exuberant to the Naughty
The focus of Holi songs is on spectacle and fun. The celebrations are also used to portend danger. Often, they allow some license for contact, wet saris, touching bodies and so on, which was earlier as restricted in films as it was in real life.
Nayak, Satyajit Ray’s Sensitive Portrayal of the Interior World and Insecurities of a Star
Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore lend conviction to their roles, enhancing the enjoyment of the five-decade-old film. Read the article here
Book Review: A Close up of the Inner and Outer Life of Irrfan Khan as an Actor
In his book, filmmaker Anup Singh doesn’t retell Irrfan’s life story but focuses on his life at the time of making films, how he performed in front of the camera and how he relaxed off it. Read the review here
The Heart of the Song
Lata sang for all of us. Her voice was instantly recognisable. Whoever the star, she brought us into the heroine’s inner life.
The Scent of Mumbai
A perfumed passage to nostalgia
Power on Trial
Jai Bhim and the search for justice in Indian cinema
Romancing the Pathan
Tracing the masculinity of star power in Hindi cinema
The Hippy Gaze
India through the prism of counterculture
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Parsi journey across history and cultures—with a stopover at Irani café.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
From the martyrdom of Thomas Becket to the holy relics of Hindi cinema.
The Mind of Bengal
It is easy to see why Ray’s films were classed as arthouse in the West. In Calcutta, they were screened in cinemas which showed regular Bengali films, whose audiences in the 1950s and 1960s didn’t watch much Hindi cinema.
Exile and the Kingdom
THE UK IS in official mourning for HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, known to my generation as the DofE, or Phil the Greek.
Remembering ‘Anand’ and Its Gallows Humour of an India at Ease With Its Differences
Rewatching Anand recently was like seeing a different film. The story was the same, of two unlikely friends. Dr Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan), a medical doctor, is the author of a book, Anand, about his relationship with Anand (Rajesh Khanna), who is dying of cancer but wants to enjoy every minute of what is left of his life. Read […]
The Indian Pastoral
I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT agriculture, even though my family were farmers three generations ago. I stayed on farms as a child and enjoyed milking a cow and the lambing season, but it was muddy and smelly. I’m far too sentimental about animals to pass muster in the country. I never ate rabbit after hearing that […]
Magic Mountains
WE’VE JUST HAD the coldest weather in the UK in 25 years, with even some stretches of the Thames freezing. Many of us who grew up in the 1960s didn’t have central heating and this meant frozen and leaking pipes. So for those of my generation nothing beats viewing snow from the comfort of a […]
May the Road Rise up to Meet You
WE’VE JUST SAID goodbye to one of the worst years most of us recall. There were also sad goodbyes, leaving only memories. I hope this year will be one where the goodbyes aren’t sad but bring the promise of happy returns. Read the full article here
Soumitra Chatterjee: The Constant Actor
LONG BEFORE I EVER saw a mainstream Hindi movie, I watched Indian films at the British Film Institute (BFI) and at arthouse cinemas in London. Most of the films were made by Satyajit Ray, but also the occasional Mrinal Sen, Goutam Ghose. In those days I could see films only in cinema halls, rarely on […]
The Sacred Feminine
A FEW YEARS AGO, an invitation to IIT Guwahati allowed me to fulfil two long held ambitions. One was to go to Kaziranga (which was even more magical than I had hoped), and the other was to visit the Kamakhya temple. The underground part of this Shaktipeeth has an uncanny atmosphere, what could be called an energy, […]
An Orthodox Thought
LIKE MANY PEOPLE worldwide (Netflix doesn’t give ratings), I’ve been hooked on Shtisel, an Israeli drama series about four generations of the Shtisel family living in contemporary Jerusalem. I’ve not been so drawn into a series since The Sopranos, fascinated by both, perhaps because they share the same hook: how do traditional values and societies, of which […]
Ageing in Life and Films
IHAVE TAKEN EARLY retirement from my job as Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema but will continue my forty-year association with SOAS University of London as Professor Emerita and through my former students and colleagues and the global network of South Asianists. As Shailendra wrote and Lata sang, ‘Ajeeb dastan hai yeh, kahan shuru kahan […]
The Scent of India
COVID-19 IS MAKING me nostalgic. It’s not possible to travel to India currently, and I would love to be spending some of the monsoon there, preferably in Goa with not much to do. I’m watching films (mostly Bengali, with some Hindi serials and the occasional new film such as Raat Akeli Hai and Gulabo Sitabo, and, […]
The Outsiders
AS EVERYONE ELSE under the lockdown, I’ve been watching serials and films, mostly in Hindi and Bengali, with a diversion to the wonderful Babylon Berlin which took us to the German film industry of the 1930s, which brought to mind the founding members of Bombay Talkies. Read the full article here
Carry On Doctor
‘HELLO, HELLO, it’s me,’ said my husband, looking worried. I didn’t know I’d been unconscious for several days but I realised my wrists were loosely tied to a hospital bed. ‘Yes, it’s you. Who else could it be? Why am I here?’ Read the full article here
Rishi & Irrfan
WE HAVE LOST two very different superstars. Irrfan, the boy from nowhere, who wasn’t handsome in the conventional Hindi film manner, but whose excess of talent and charm carried him to the top at home and overseas. Rishi, born a star, Bollywood royalty, for whom Lata Mangeshkar, Nargis and others were always part of his […]
The City of Perpetual Pursuit
A RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOK in which I was involved, Bombay Before Mumbai, a Festschrift for the Australian historian of India, Jim Masselos, who wrote his PhD on the city at the University of Bombay in the early 1960s, covers the city from very many angles other than the cinematic imagination. Read the full article
A Letter from Dhaka
I FIRST HEARD OF Bangladesh in 1971, not just because of George Harrison, but because my mother made me donate a portion of my meagre pocket money for cyclone relief. What goes around comes around and this year I went to Bangladesh for my first brief visit, as a speaker at the Dhaka Literature Festival, and […]
The Pull of the Provincial
I AM A GEORDIE, or a Northumbrian—that is, a person from the northeast of England. We’re a distinctive group, known for our strong to incomprehensible accents, directness (to put it politely) and a fondness for the good life. We are seen as the Punjabis of England: jovial but lacking sophistication and learning. Just as with […]
Learning from Hindi cinema’s classroom aesthetics
THE TURNING OF the seasons is the sign that it’s time to go back to school. The August Bank Holiday on the last Monday of August in England has a feeling of desperation as one tries to hold on to the long days while knowing they will soon be over. I imagine it’s different for […]
The Sporting Spirit
THE CRICKET WORLD Cup, the Men’s Final at Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix all took place on one day. While many were torn between at least two of these, I was not among them. Sports—or games, as they were known then— were compulsory at school but this was before games for women were taken seriously. […]
A South Asian Summer in London
JUNE IS THE time of the annual migration of Delhi and Mumbai elites to London and it’s the time for Indian literature and film festivals. I’m looking forward to catching up with literary friends at the talks and parties of Jaipur Lit Fest in London and filmi friends at the Bagri Foundation London Indian Film […]
The National Spirit
MAINSTREAM HINDI FILMS are more concerned about striving for emotional accuracy than the aesthetics of realism. Read the full article here
April Is Not the Cruellest Month
THE SPRING EQUINOX seems a more logical time to begin the New Year than January 1st. Indeed the New Year in England was March 25th (Lady Day or the Feast of the Annunciation) from 1155 to 1752 when the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750 brought in the Gregorian calendar in line with the rest […]
Where the Guest is God
FOR VISITORS FROM overseas, the biggest risk to health in India is what I have coined: ‘militant’ hospitality. Any occasion, indeed any excuse, means that one must press some special food and drink on one’s guests. For extreme hospitality moments, I have tried to master the trick of putting my arm over my plate to […]
My Indian Hall of Fame
I’M OFTEN ASKED to list my 10 favourite Hindi films ever, over the last decade, since the millennium, or since Independence. Read the full article here
The Twain Shall Meet, But…
EDWARD SAID’S TERM ‘Orientalism’, a view of the East that makes it essentially different from the West, is well known. The reverse gaze, Occidentalism, of the East at the West, has received far less attention, perhaps because of the focus on power, not least through colonialism and its acquisition of knowledge about the ‘East’. However, […]
Flood, Mud and Blood
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN in Kerala this week with Mr D, in search of elephants in Periyar and Wayanad and to revisit Cochin. I thought of Coorg as an alternative destination till I realised that it too had been hit terribly hard by the monsoon rains. Our postponement is totally insignificant in the face of […]
Scotch Whimsy
I WOULD HAVE HAD a perfect holiday on the west coast of Scotland had a friend not emailed me a link to The Road to the Isles, a song which has traditional roots but around World War I became a popular music hall number and military march. Even though my ancestors left the Isles over a century ago, I was misty-eyed, reaching for my tartan-shortbread-whisky, as we drove up the Road to the Isles, known more prosaically as the A830.
Eye of the Tiger
INDIA’S LIFE EXPECTANCY has almost doubled since Independence, and has now reached 65, though it remains much lower than in the richest countries (in China, it is 76). Even if we factor child mortality into this, India’s population remains one of the youngest in the world, with about half being under 25 and two-thirds under […]
Mumbai Mail
My train journey across Hindi cinema Read the full article here
Being Salman Khan
BEING A FAN of Salman Khan may lead to guilt by association, namely accusations of supporting the killing of endangered species, drunk driving and abusing women. How do we Salman fans reconcile these charges with our pleasure in watching his films? Why is he one of the most dependable stars of Hindi cinema, the last […]
The Intimate Fantasy
ONE OF THE MOST powerful political speeches of the 20th century was Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have a Dream…. His dream was more than just a hopeful vision or a wish, but also prophetic. This waking dream or wish for the future is different from the sleeping dream, where the dreamer may not have […]
An Oscar, Finally, for James Ivory, Maker of Stylish and Upper Middlebrow Cinema
At 89, James Ivory has become the oldest person to win an Oscar, passing even Ennio Morricone (87 in 2016), and also the oldest to win a BAFTA. Although this was Ivory’s first Oscar, he has been nominated several times for Best Director and Best Picture, while Merchant Ivory Productions has won six Academy Awards.