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
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
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.…
Kartikey Sehgal
Read the first part on this page
The respondent is unconcerned about the topic. She is unaware of discussions on casteism and racism in the media. She tells me that there are many like her; they have belief in dharma and don’t bother about what allegations others put on their way of living. Often I have to reconfirm what she says; “there was lots of bloodshed between the brahmins and kshatriyas” where bloodshed means that the boy’s…
Kartikey Sehgal
I came upon this information during a conversation on casteism. The lady told me, “There has never been much caste problem in my home town [Jammu] )".
She continued:
“We recently discovered that a family belonging to the shudra caste is actually a brahmin family. The ____ (surname) were brahmins at one time and shifted to a lower caste probably to defend themselves.”
Here’s the backdrop; two families in Jammu have been friends for many decades thought they are from…
Kartikey Sehgal
A walk to Dr. Ambedkar’s memorial prompts thoughts on ‘dalitism’.
Did Siddhārtha envisage Indian Buddhism as a sect of people bickering about the validity and significance of a particular famous leader? Or a sect that frowns upon and overtly discourages a boy and a girl from holding hands? If we consider Buddhism as a religion without rites and if then outlaw ‘couples’ then doesn’t it become a religion of rites; that one rule spawning several other rules about public decency…
Kartikey Sehgal
–Drugs and economic disparity in the Indian home of the Dalai Lama. Standalone story. Other parts of the series here.
“Hey gorgeous, nice shoes”, they call out to a foreigner who is wearing shining dark red shoes. She turns to look at them; “thanks”. As a rule, the duo avoids complementing Indian women and any woman with a man. “Hey baby! You look beautiful” and “Wow, you are lovely”, they call out to women in their…