At The Edge

Pick from Diwali trash this year. Nazi Fireworks! -0- Bonus: Nagin Pataka -0-

Zaheera and Shabana are asked in Star & Syle, October 22, 1976

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These letters were in response to Pritish Nandy's piece on Khushwant Singh turning 70 published in April 21 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India in 1985. Red-bottomed monkeys, malice, imagining naked women, pungency, dick and other regular things associated with 'man in the bulb'. The news of him putting down his pen was greeted with same words and thoughts. [‘I May Die Any Day Now’,  Outlook ]. -0-

Biryani Breakfast in Gurgaon, 

The hair. Flip through some old family album. Code 10 Tonic for Hair Dressing, 1978 -0-

Rita Ray  (1924-1983) was a regular cinephile, someone who certainly understood the art of it, someone who could interpret the things she saw on screen, someone who had strong views on cinema and what it ought to stand for. But her views underwent some drastic changes after she agreed to be on the advisory Panel of Censor Board. All of a sudden she found herself on the evil side, a side much cursed and secretly envied. Rita began to see things from the other side, the other side of the argument. Now she too asked herself the question, the rallying cry of that side, ‘What about the average person? Would he/she be able to handle it?’ At the same time she did wonder how to go about defining the ‘average’. She did note the rather unintentionally comic manner in which the serious business of Censoring was conducted. She took note of her fellow panelists, bored middle-aged women who had never seen a film in life, pretentious intellectuals who only wanted to be bothered abo...

Ashok Kumar in Bombay Talkies' Savitri-1937

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"It is a strange paradox that the historian, who is concerned professionally with the past, plays a crucial role, in the future of the society which he is studying. The historian's interest lies in trying to understand the emergence and the evolution of a society in a historical perspective, where the term society includes every aspect of a people's life. As a result of his investigations, the historian creates a picture of the society. In his handling of the evidence from the past, he is often influenced by his own contemporary setting. Historical interpretation can therefore become a two-way process - where, the needs of the present are read into the past, and where the image of the past is sought to be imposed upon the present. The image of the past is the historian's contribution to the future. For, this image can be used by his contemporaries for political myth-making. Such political projections of a society seek intel...