Frame for frame
I wrote about Atul Dodiya's 2019 show as an homage equally to Alfred Hitchcock and the artistic condition
Haku Shah's exhibition in Mumbai spotlights his underloved paintings
On the Gandhian artist who is best remembered for bringing global attention to Indian rural and indigenous arts
Eye Culture: Leaking truth to power
A column on the longstanding Iranian cinema tradition of secretly shooting and smuggling films out of the country
A second chance
The eloquent auctioneer
Top auctioneers of art and memorabilia tell me about the skills and thrills that go with performing sales at the rostrum
Irrfan Unplugged
In this 2016 interview, Irrfan offers a glimpse of his life of the mind--the philosophies, arts, and memories that informed his way of being.
An Eye for Mumbai
Over four and a half decades in art, Sudhir Patwardhan has tirelessly documented Mumbai's working class people and neighbourhoods. An interview with the artist.
Annie’s song
Lunch with BS: Anuparna Roy, who became the first Indian filmmaker to win the Orizzonti Award in 2025, tells me about the rebellious road she took to make 'Songs of Forgotten Trees'
Augmented truths
Reenactments are considered among the more controversial tools in documentary filmmaking. Yet, in multiple documentaries screened at the recent Sundance festival, directors comfortably added fiction-style flourishes.
From no permissions to shoot outdoors to a smuggled print: An Iranian film’s journey to Sundance festival
Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei’s film, ‘The Friend’s House is Here’, premiered at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category. The Iranian-American husband-wife filmmakers shot the film in Iran amid the extraordinary turbulence of 2025: the 12-day war following Israel’s strikes, nationwide demonstrations, and violent crackdowns. Their film, inspired by real accounts, portrays two young women artists expressing themselves and protecting each other i...
Here comes the Sun-dance
Two short films set in South India will premiere at the largest independent film festival in the US. The debutant directors talk about their first steps into filmmaking
Women in the loop
The Rise of Real Estate Influencers
How home brokers are finding internet celebrity as real estate influencers
Check in at Mumbai airport, check out the artefacts
Mumbai Airport has a museum and it's 10 years old already. How is it ageing? A review.
Musician who united a divided state
Colloquial in the commentary box
From the file: A 2020 piece on how cricket broadcasts in multiple Indian languages democratised the sport for spectators and changed commentary as we knew it.
Watered Down: Evaluating Bengaluru's future as India's IT capital
As Bengaluru segues from a parched summer to torrential rains, citizen groups and authorities evaluate the city's future as India's IT capital
Living on the Edge
This long-form reported feature appeared in The Indian Quarterly. I met Ayub Shikalgar, a swashbuckling emergency responder and among the last of India's traditional knife sharpeners, when he was negotiating change in both his lines of work.
Brides (2025) Review: Compassionate Prelude To A Cautionary Tale
Review of Brides, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival 2025. Its lens rested on the overlooked emotional realities of young people who made the trip to Syria.
On the slow road: From drive-in cinemas to smaller outdoor screenings
Sanchit Gupta, co-founder of events startup Sunset Cinema Club, won’t be opening another drive-in cinema anytime soon.
“Maybe during the next pandemic,” he says with a laugh.
In 2019, Sunset Cinema Club rented a large sports facility in Delhi-NCR to create a space where people could park their cars and watch classic movies, such as Pulp Fiction and Top Gun on a big screen. Demand for socially-distanced entertainment options, when Covid hit, had momentarily stoked sales but the economics ar
“Maybe during the next pandemic,” he says with a laugh.
In 2019, Sunset Cinema Club rented a large sports facility in Delhi-NCR to create a space where people could park their cars and watch classic movies, such as Pulp Fiction and Top Gun on a big screen. Demand for socially-distanced entertainment options, when Covid hit, had momentarily stoked sales but the economics ar
Kiss and Tale: Meet rising star Preeti Panigrahi who shines in 'Girls Will Be Girls'
The young actor picked up a jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival for her performance as Mira in the coming-of-age drama
Sundance 2024: Finding Community
How mainland filmmakers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan go about telling stories from northeast India
How Indian women cinematographers carved a niche in a male-dominated field
Ahead of the Oscars, where the Academy nominated a woman in the cinematography category for only the third time ever, I dived into the rise of Indian women cinematographers. Past and practicing women behind the camera, including Asia's first female cinematographer BR Vijayalakshmi, talked about operating in a field where they make up well below 10% of the total workforce.
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East in west
From the UK, a special report exploring how for the 3 million South Asians in that country, cinema offered a way to construct and carry on culture; to make a home away from home. The search took me to DVD stores and cinema houses including the defunct Himalaya Palace, once famously run by the Indian business community, in London's Southall.
Every Word's Worth
As the demand for strong stories brings writing into focus, Indian screenwriters are asking for due credit and reward. My report from 2020.
Hawaiian healer
Thomas Daniel, a retired commercial fisherman living in Hawaii, shows his love for vintage Hindi and Urdu films by carefully restoring them at home. He has cleaned up and restored hundreds of films which came to him in shoddily produced, worn out DVD, VCD, and VHS formats. On his YouTube channel, grateful fans of cinema from the subcontinent leave messages like 'God bless you'.