The Young India

Ananth Venkatesh

“Undue reliance on tranquil international diplomacy and forceless intranational diplomacy can backfire badly, thereby humiliating the national ego.”

The monstrosity of terrorists demonstrated by the recent bloodletting in Pune [Photo: top; source] illustrates the deviousness of Islamist fundamentalism. The blameless victims of the blast at a popular store of bakery in Pune are the latest in the enormous list of unfortunate Indians who have been wolfed by Islamist bigots.

India is a nation that has juddered…

Kartikey Sehgal

Can this be a tourist spot. May we make it into one. The area is Verova Village that connects to the popular Mudh Island area by ferryboats. When you are in Mumbai you may like to go to the beaches at Mudh. The ferries at Versova Village are an easier way to reach Mudh; they are economical and save you hours of road traffic.

Versova Village holds a capacity for magnificence; if you can go past the filth and pollution.…

Kartikey Sehgal

“Happiness will not come from happiness; but only from pain. We know the value of standing in shade only after roaming in the hot day sun.”
–Atharva Veda

Pain is fun. Pain is natural. Pain is the word given to describe a feeling that is not like happiness. Humans crave pain. Often they are not able to understand the true nature of pain and hence they give in to drugs and sadism. To know pain is to understand…

Kartikey Sehgal
Part One
Part Two

Another theatre writer, Vikram Kapadia, whose play is undergoing adaptation for film, thinks that “there is no fixed formula as to what makes a film work”.

Vikram’s play ‘Black With Equal’ is a black comedy in English about the trials and tribulations of a housing society and has been staged more than a hundred times.

Like Aatish, he is comfortable with placing an item song in the film but his concern is…

Kartikey Sehgal
Role of songs in a film’s success and a filmmaker talking about his film losing out to an item song and marketing.
Part One here.

…continued
But Sanjay feels that though an item number does not define a film, “there is at least a chance that more people will go to theatres. Because of the item song and any marketing ploy, the film is not going to lose out on audience”.

This logic, however, does…

Kartikey Sehgal

Written first for DNA

Director Shyam Benegal, who has captured myriad expressions of life in his various films, had to free himself from the clutches of the item-number when he was making ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’.

“He did not want to include songs in the film. He did so on the behest of the producers”, says writer Atul Tiwari who has worked with the director.

In one of the songs, that was probably required to be the item song of the…

Kartikey Sehgal

Discipline is to do with fear. Basically we fear what we should do with our time and so we invent discipline. With discipline there is no fear as to what we have to do with our time. Though I am not fearful, I had decided to use this time for other kinds of writing but I am now writing on fear and discipline

So discipline should come from within. You should be bothered as to what you are going…

 Kartikey Sehgal

I walk to the theatre and think that it’s not too much to ask for any man. Some security and movie-watching with your family.

“Tell me”, says Bhupinder while manoeuvring his auto-rickshaw through the police barricade, “won’t the terrorist simply take the bus?” A set of three policemen, huddled together, ask for the vehicles to slow down; the bus and heavy transport is let through without scrutiny. “The Police simply adds to traffic woes. In the morning they are…

Kartikey Sehgal

Not the camera but the actors move aplenty and intone and tell us about the epic victory of theatre actors over film actors.

You’d imagine that the director had fun making this movie. Then you’d read about his hardships and how he had to mortgage or sell property to obtain some money. Then you’d think that this was a difficult movie to make, full of sacrifices. But let me tell you, the director had fun and so did the actors.…