Curious Case: By Radhika Bhirani

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com "THE CYCLE CONTINUES". Vidyut Jammwal said it as succinctly as one could, and as bluntly as one should. Days after the media churned news, views and interviews about lost opportunities, the lack of a level playing field, the star system, the bias, the discrimination, the coteries, the benefit of access and visibility and all of the muck that goes behind the scenes, in the wake of Sushant Singh Rajput's death, here we are, once again, looking at how nothing changes. How the world of showbiz will continue to rotate around and be dictated by the 'stars'. The launch of Disney+ Hotstar's revolutionaly Disney+ Hotstar Multiplex, aimed to cater to the changing ways of how hundreds of millions of Indians watch movies, saw head honcho Uday Shankar unveil an exciting line-up of seven films set for direct release on the platform. Seven films. But only four representatives - Akshay Kumar (Laxmmi Bomb), Ajay Devgn (Bhuj - The Pride of Ind...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com Parambrata Chattopadhyay's latest turn as Sudip, a measured performance as a self righteous doctor in the visually lyrical social drama Bulbbul, brings me back to a question I've always had: Really, why don't we see much more of him, and in more prominent roles in Hindi cinema? The actor, who turned a year older today, has a rich filmography to his credit in Bengali cinema. But ever since he tip-toed into Hindi filmdom, with what he describes as the "soft spoken, chivalrous, generous and gentleman-like" role of Assistant Sub-Inspector Satyoki 'Rana' Sinha aka Saarthi in the 2012 film Kahaani, Parambrata has left Bollywood buffs hungry for more. He's done bits here and there, in Gang of Ghosts, Traffic and Pari, playing a 'saarthi', a non-quintessential hero once in a while, but still, at the cost of a bit of exaggeration, 'yeh dil maange more'. Over a quick chat which had happened in February, before t...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com I don't remember. But my mother will never forget. "I was a working mom. She was very little. There were days I dropped her off to my parents' home before I left for work in the morning, or my mother-in-law, the neighbours or our full-time maid would take care of her. I was hardly there." She reminisced, as my husband listened, about my days as a toddler. "Some days, I had no option but to take her with me to the office... I would use a cardboard box there to keep her comfortable, and then I could watch her while I worked." But this isn't about me. Or her. It's about the little moments, the experiences, the joys and the happiness that somewhere, parents lose out on in their pursuit to build a future they dream of, for themselves and their children. The moments that some parents have been able to live up because an unprecedented lockdown came as a blessing in disguise, and allowed them the luxury of 'family time...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com It's a balmy summer evening. I sip away on a calming cup of tea. The terrace, wrapped in lush green. The sky, dotted by birds. The air, resounding with their calls. And the sight, stuck on a once-bustling Metro station. An empty train passes by. The mind rewinds. "Iss yaatra mein thoda vilamb hoga." That dreaded announcement, doing nothing to quell the restlessness every time I was late for office, or in a hurry to reach home. But distractions were aplenty. Unintentional, or even intentional peeps into the phone screens of co-passengers. Or lending an eager ear to some unforgettable conversations. I ain't a curious case for nothing! How else would I know that saving your boyfriend's name as "My Tiger" is seemingly 'cool', eh? Or how a 59-year-old uncle prefers not to colour his all-white hair only because "Baal dekh ke, bachche easily seat de dete hain Metro mein"? It's a joyride. Well, sometimes i...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com "Just because everyone is behaving like a clown, it doesn't mean you have to join the circus". Someone hit the nail on the head. And here I am, trying to push it further into the wall, with a mind fatigued of an overdrive of chitter-chatter on conjectured reasons and more behind 34-year-old actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. "Sushant is no more and yet, he is talked less about on Twitter, but Karan Johar starts trending. Its laughable and sad," a young and upcoming actor, who has faced his set of rejections and overnight replacements in the industry, tells me. It's a valid comment on the irony that exists. And also on the predatory nature of people, who "want to see this circus and this perversion of it", panning out as it is on the big bad world we call social media. "We have more negative things to say about other people than say nice things about a person who has departed," says the actor, choosi...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com It's the day after. Visuals of Sushant Singh Rajput's lifeless body sprawled across an unkempt bed, fail to stop haunting. They won't. For a long time. In an analogy that astronomy-junkie Sushant would have related to, it's like a partial eclipse; unwittingly obscuring the happy mental image of a promising and talented actor, gone too soon. Did I need to see the sight? Who decides? News channels racing for TRPs? Nondescript social media users? Whatsapp groups? You? I? Who? The difference between a person who just puts out or 'forwards' the 'pics' of a dead body via phone, and one who at least asks before sharing them, is one: ethics. And just like that, "Responsible reporting is an ethical issue for an individual journalist, publication or channel. It cannot be regulated," a media and entertainment industry veteran reminds rightfully. A senior reporter, who has had a brush with the crime beat, argues that TV n...

By Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com "Chhan chhan awaaz aati thhi.... Bhar bhar ke chawani athani phainkte thhe." Nostalgia engulfs as SMM Ausaja rewinds to the 70s and 80s, and relives the scene that used to be -- the release of an Amitabh Bachchan film in a theatre. The advance ticket windows used to open a week prior to a film's release. The upcoming film's hoarding used to replace that of the ongoing film. The queues used to be for advance booking. "Bachchan's films used to generate so much of advance bookings that in the first week, the regular, current window didn't used to open only. That was the kind of draw his films got," recounts Ausaja, a film historian, author and archivist of vintage film memorabilia, and who is working on a special book on Big B. His memories are vivid. "Bachchan's films used to go houseful, a gende ke phool ki maala (garland of marigold flowers) used to adorn a 'houseful' board outside ticket windows...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com "Zindagi Dhoop, Tum Ghanaa Saaya" How beautifully did Javed Akhtar summarise, in just a few words, the sense of comfort that comes with a relationship. To me, any and every relationship. Akhtar has just received the Richard Dawkins Award 2020 for "critical thinking, holding religious dogma upto scrutiny, advancing human progress and humanist values". The news transported me back to a conversation I had with the veteran writer-lyricist in January, just before he hit platinum on the age bar. We spoke about ageing, celebrations, staying relevant, the future and regrets. But some bits deem fit to be revisited now. It was in 2017 that Akhtar was his usual poetic self at an Urdu literary festival in the Capital, when he got down to describing his bond with wife and actor Shabana Azmi. "Meri aur Shabana ki dosti itni gehri hai, itni achhi hai aur itni mazboot hai ki shaadi bhi uska kuch nahi bigaad saki...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com We've all heard those stories. In Bollywood parlance, of 'jabra' fans. There was Rajesh Khanna, whose car would be laced with lipstick marks from fanatical fans, and women sent him letters written in blood. There's Amitabh Bachchan, for whom a fan even built a 'temple' in Kolkata, and the world of cinema has no dearth of stories so on an so forth. But beyond the world of films, even Indian television stars have had some unforgettable -- some overwhelming, some scary and some awkward --fan experiences. As the 1980s' epochal shows Ramayan and Mahabharat got set for a re-run to keep viewers engaged during the nationwide lockdown in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic earlier this year, I reconnected with actor Nitish Bharadwaj. It is his epic embodiment as Lord Krishna in B.R. Chopra's Mahabharat which won him fans galore in his heydays. The re-run, which continue to drive high viewerships even after a four-phased lockdown, ...

Radhika Bhirani  rbhirani@gmail.com "Honestly, you know, all of us are in such privileged positions... We're all good, comfortable, and we are using this time to spend as a family, because in our busy professional careers, we tend to neglect that." There was a sense of urgency, a slight discomfort that I felt as Kabir Khan answered how life had been at home in the lockdown. Strolling within the building compound of his home in Mumbai as he spoke to me over a phone call to answer parts of an "all encompassing" questionnaire, as he described it, , Khan said, "One feels fortunate that we have the space in our building to walk around." As much as Khan came across as someone who is cognizant and grateful for his everyday privileges during the lockdown, a part of his heart also aches for the widespread apathy towards the migrant workforce, which was left scrambling for survival as a nationwide lockdown was unleashed in March due to the Covid-19 pandemi...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com It was a rustic, wall-fitted, glass almirah in one corner of a room. Shelves full of VHS tapes of old, gold cinema. A box style TV and a VCR player took centrestage in the room. And right in front of it was a chair, where my grand-uncle, whom we lovingly called Tayaji Nana, would sit and enjoy his cinematic favourites. Memories of summer holidays spent at 'Nani ghar', a colonial style bungalow on a quaint, clean and green street of Delhi, are special. And afresh. They will forever be. And so, the news of Basu Chatterjee's death, took me back to those days. To when Tayaji Nana rummaged through his VHS tapes, often picking Chameli Ki Shaadi or Khatta Meetha. He never got tired of them. Neither did we. In hindsight, the 'you and I' genre that defines Chatterjee's cinema, was such a binding factor for an audience of different generations, within a home. And so evergreen are these films, that the saga continues. What also lives on i...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com In the early days of the lockdown, Danish Husain had declined a request for an online performance. But when the "changed reality" of the lockdown began dawning on him, the man who wears many hats -- actor, poet, storyteller, theatre director -- embraced what several artistes across the spectrum of performing arts in a culturally rich milieu like India are -- social media engagement. A cursory glance at his @dan.husain Instagram page is a window into his 'A Dastango Stranded in America' series, apart from the 'gupshup', 'chai pe charcha' and 'ru-ba-ru' sessions on subjects as diverse as qissebaazi, poetry, food, religion, emotional and mental health, that have kept him on his toes through weeks of being in lockdown far away from home, in the US, in a Detroit suburb called South Lyon. Far away yes, but yet so near to an audience -- a growing one at that -- which perhaps remained out of bounds through traditional...

Radhika Bhirani rbhirani@gmail.com Here's a 'dabangg' talent waiting to explode in the Hindi film world. For why I say "waiting to explode", please watch Vikramaditya Motwane's painterly style, period-set Lootera (2013). It's that rare Hindi film where silence and eyes speak louder than words and actions, brought alive with such simplicity and subtlety by Sonakshi Sinha, that you do, for a moment, ponder if she's the same actor who started her Bollywood career 10 years ago as the effervescent Rajjo to Salman Khan's 'chulbula' Chulbul Pandey in an out-and-out commercial masala affair as Dabangg. "I think Lootera was a film ahead of its time, and I love myself in that space as well. I really think it was pure magic on screen. If you ask why you don't see me in those kind of roles more often, it is because those kind of roles are just not easy to come by. After Lootera, that kind of film, that kind of role... I don't think I have ...