The Young India

Shaival Thakkar and
Kartikey Sehgal

In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, ‘Everybody Hurts’, a popular song by the alternative rock music group R.E.M. was used in a fund raising concert for the victims’ families.

In this video, music aficionado Shaival Thakkar talks about the charm of R.E.M. and his love for alternative music. This video also suffices as an introduction to alternative rock music. If you like meaningful lyrics and ‘soft’ music—relatively softer than the strains of hard…

Kartikey Sehgal
(Rated Mature)
A relation between ‘media writing about rape and society reading about rape’.

1. Media Covers Rape

The media knows all about rape. How it happened. When it happened. How many and what they did. If they are connected to someone powerful. What was the girl wearing. The time. If she was alone. Should she be alone. If she shouted. If she was gagged. Her sisters or brothers. The family of the rapist. And much…

Kartikey Sehgal

I had reviewed the ‘20th Pandit Durgalal Festival’ for the magazine ‘Nartanam’. Here are some photographs from the event.

 
The event is presented annually by danseuse Uma Dogra to commemorate the memory of Durgalal, her dance guru. Uma is the founder and Managing Director of ‘Sam Ved Society for Performing Arts’.

 
The three day festival began with a performance of light ghazals by Jagjit Singh. There was much demand for some of…

Kartikey Sehgal

If you want to have a clear picture of the events,… then you may watch these videos instead of relying on the contents of the traditional media that holds the ongoing Indian Premiere League as more important than the ongoing riots.

The participating minority community has not endeared itself to the nation by indulging in riots at Karnataka and Bareilly. The media has been relatively silent on the riots till now—apparently to not blow it into a national issue—but…

Kartikey Sehgal

Rated Mature.
Swami: A title given to a monk or a spiritual master

It may be an uncomfortable truth but swamis have hair on their body. When they recline on their bed and if the robe around their body is loosely tied, then it will pull up, exposing to anybody interested, hairy thighs. Sometimes they may even scratch those thighs.

Yet when they sit in their robes and talk about spirituality and science, many listeners don’t imagine such…

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…