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Restaurant Review: Farzi Café
I’d first heard of Farzi Café when it opened in Gurgaon’s Cyber Hub and there were people writing rave reviews about all the interesting fusion stuff they were doing: duck samosas with plum chutney was...
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Biwi aur Makaan (1966)
I’m reading Jai Arjun Singh’s The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee: The Filmmaker Everyone Loves these days (yes; a review will be posted sometime this month). A few pages into the book, and I came across...
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Dilli Haat: Five Eclectic Thalis
Dilli Haat, opposite INA Market, is my usual go-to place when I want to buy ethnic gifts for friends and family. An added attraction, as far as I and my family are concerned, is that Dilli Haat offers...
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Ten of my favourite romantic duets
One would’ve thought a blog dedicated largely to old Hindi cinema would milk Valentine’s Day for all it’s worth; after all, the number of old Hindi films that didn’t feature a romance of some sort, of...
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Book Review: Jai Arjun Singh’s ‘The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’
In all the years I’ve been writing this blog, one film maker whose name keeps cropping up every now and then—whose films I’ve reviewed, whose work I’ve commented on—is the brilliant Hrishikesh...
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Restaurant Review: Jamie’s Italian
I don’t know how many of you out there know that I hold a diploma in hotel management—which means I trained for three years in, among other subjects, what was technically known as Food Production. I...
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Rawhide (1951)
The other day, a blog reader, Dr Pradeep Prahlad, commented on one of my reviews of a Tyrone Power film, Witness for the Prosecution. It reminded me that a few years back, I went through a longish...
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Dil Hi Toh Hai (1963)
Some months back, I watched two relatively new Muslim socials: Daawat-e-Ishq and Bobby Jasoos. Both were an interesting reflection on the way the Muslim social has changed over the years (after close...
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Restaurant Review: Lodi—The Garden Restaurant
The Lodhi Gardens in Delhi are an amazing place. Once known as Lady Willingdon Park, these gardens in South Delhi are a hit with just about everyone from nature lovers (there are lots of species of...
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Ten of my favourite ‘Man Sings, Woman Dances’ songs
Sometime back, I was watching Dil Hi Toh Hai, and for the first time, actually paid attention to the scenario and picturization of the classic Laaga chunari mein daag. Raj Kapoor, in disguise, plays a...
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Ni Liv (1957)
There is something attractive about survival stories, about men and women finding themselves struggling to survive against whatever man and nature throws at them. Nature more often than man, because...
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Abhilasha (1968)
A lot of my memories of 50s and 60s cinema date back to the 1980s, when almost all the films I watched were those shown on Doordarshan. In the early years, with Doordarshan being the sole channel, my...
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Ten of my favourite funny songs
Considering the ‘comic side plot’ used to be such an integral part of old Hindi cinema—and that the presence of a Johnny Walker, a Rajendranath, or a Mehmood almost invariably meant that there would be...
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The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
I have a thing for heist films. Give me a clever one, and I can watch it again and again. The other day, I was reminded ofThe Thomas Crown Affair, which—to a teenaged me—was only about The Windmills of...
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Restaurant Review: Big Fat Sandwich
Ambience Mall in Vasant Kunj is one of those places that have a fairly good record (as far as I am concerned, and as far as malls in Delhi go) of restaurants that are worth a visit. While it has …...
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Poonam ki Raat (1965)
One style of mystery story popular in the early 60s (though there was the odd film even earlier, like Mahal) was the one where the suspense includes a seemingly supernatural element. A woman in white,...
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Hamlet (1954)
Today, April 23, 2016, marks the 400th death anniversary of one of English literature’s greatest writers, a man who had a huge hand in making English what it is today. Though William Shakespeare’s date...
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Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
I’ve just finished reading what’s considered to be the finest work by one of science fiction’s greatest writers: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Set in a dystopian future where literature is outlawed,...
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Ranikhet: Of Mountains and the Military
Ranikhet, tucked away in the mountains of Uttarakhand, is actually named for a queen: Rani Padmini, the consort of a local king named Raja Sukherdev. Padmini visited this area and liked it so much that...
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Ten of my favourite cynical songs
I know that sounds a little paradoxical—cynicism and something favourite? But that’s what this post is all about: songs that are cynical, but songs, too, that I like. Like a lot, in some cases. A few...
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