Known Turf

A poetry film. A bit of an experiment with cityscapes and words. The script was 'found ' in the sense that the story was constructe...

I’m currently reading a book that spans the 1920s-60s. It reveals a lot about some of the men who organized and led the freedom struggle ...

Here’s a question I have long wanted to ask of our security providers. I understand the need to scan bags and jackets. But how do you exp...

Here's the new book out there. It is called Love Stories # 1 to 14. There are (obviously) fourteen stories of love, some of it dead, so...

So it is being said that India’s economic growth is “likely to drop to 5.7%”. The report pointed out that the current growth is lower than ...

I saw this film recently, A Royal Affair , set in eighteenth century Denmark, and based on real events during the reign of Christian VII....

A young man recently visited us and noticed a sketch of Gandhi up on my wall. He asked if I liked the man. I said I did. He said he didn’...

What do Kashmiri militants, traditional caste-based panchayats in Haryana and the Chhattisgarh police have in common? No, not various kinds...

I live in a country where a woman chief minister can attribute the awful, unforgiveable crime of rape to men and women, boys and girls actu...

I wonder who decided to name her. As a baby name, it isn’t one of my favourites: Ahuti means sacrifice. There she was — three months old an...

A family outing was spoilt recently after we got into an argument about prices, economic policy and so on. It started with a comment made...

In the beginning, there was probably no word. More likely, it was a sound, or a tiny movement. Perhaps, it was no more than the invisible b...

Blurbs that promise oddities – ‘a manipulative-philanthropist ghost of a chairman’s mother; a footless whore in Siberia…’ – make one nervous...

Once upon a time, a man wrote three letters. He wrote that he hadn’t heard from his correspondent in a while. He talked of the gulf between...

What would you make of a man who told your daughter that it is her duty to suffer violence? And what would you do if this man happened to b...

And here is a new short film I made. It was great fun working with the actors. The whole thing was shot in a day and a half. Feedback welco...

When I first went to Dharavi I wasn't wearing my middle-class-gawker glasses. I was researching a story on successful businessmen and...

A few days ago, there was much relief when Ajmal Kasab, the man who killed innocent people in Mumbai, would hang after all. The Supreme Co...

So word is that our billionaire Member of Parliament Vijay Mallya, donated doors worth Rs60 lakh to a temple. With Kingfisher Airlines in ...

I don’t know much about Latehar, a district in Jharkhand, and what’s been happening there. When I ran a search online, I found one news i...