Thought Box

Difficult Daughters

Neil Simon (along with Moliere) must be the most popular western playwright whose works are adapted (often plagiarized) on the Mumbai stage. There is something about so many ...

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Bioscopewala

Call him the Kabuliwala or Bioscopewala, that image of a tainted outsider waiting to commit dastardly crimes against children is common to all cultures. The perpetrator howeve...

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The Changing Face of the Shopping Paradiso, London’s Oxford Street

If it’s London, it’s Oxford Street, that manic shopping centre where the stilleto-heeled trot by starving musicians, one of whom asks me, “Where I’m fr...

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Love Hurts And Love Heals

When Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits came in 1985, it became an international bestseller. The Chile-born, California-settled author&rs...

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The Perils of the Use and Abuse of Social Media

Humans, by nature, have loved to communicate and share stories and views since the beginning of time. Who would have thought even 20 years ago that email and social media will...

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The Ever Self-indulgent Bollywood Marketing

It is well known that in spite of producing the largest number of films in the world, the health of the industry is not very sound. With a success rate of mere 10% there is no...

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The Evil Within

Atul Satya Koushik has written and directed two plays based on mythology before – Chakravyuh and Draupadi—and his strength is clearly in his wr...

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Life is Brutal

Lisa Genova’s Every Note Played is about courage, but also states a brutal fact—there is no nobility in suffering. Some diseases strike without warning, ...

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Google @ my First Address in Life and its Fruity Lychee taste: MUZAFFARPUR

I have changed many addresses in life as an itinerant. When I click life@57, it is my first address in life and its smell, taste, sight and sound that surfaces from the cradle...

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The Man With Two Faces

In today’s fractured world, a white-skinned Urdu-speaking man would either be a suspect or an asset.  Most of David Coleman Headley’s life was spent in t...

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BOLLYWOOD: WHEN THE STAR MEETS A MEMORY

This one revisits Shah Rukh Khan’s early days through Monojit Lahiri’s recol...

November 5 2025

ALTERNATIVE ENTERTAINMENT: WHEN PHANTOM INDIA WAS GHOSTED

Khalid Mohamed assesses the now accessible 1969 documentary, Phantom India, helmed by th...

November 4 2025

TV: WHEN FRAGRANCE BECAME THE TEACHER

In its first edition, Surabhi Diaries by Suhail Tatari revisits the beloved 1990s TV phe...

November 2 2025