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Film journalist says ‘I hate Bollywood’

‘I hate Bollywood’ is Mumbai film journalist Rohit Khilnani’s debut novel, which was launched by Bollywood film actor Amitabh Bachchan.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Amidst a packed house, Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan launched well-known entertainment journalist, Rohit Khilnani’s debut novel, I Hate Bollywood at Sofitel, BKC, Mumbai.

At the launch of Rohit’s book, Bachchanspoke at length about a chapter in the book, ‘The Hospital Beat’. The chapter talks about how reporters cover celebrities when they are admitted in the hospital. It focusses on reporters outside Lilavati Hospital when Bachchan was admitted there in 2006. “Of course the media has to do its job, but there have been times when my car couldn’t move because the media had blocked the way,” he said, also recollecting an incident when a reporter had entered the hospital in disguise. “Jaya asked me why am I giving interviews from the hospital room, I told her I have not given any interview. Later we realised that this reporter had entered my room dressed as a doctor.”

To which the author admitted, “Yes, media can be insensitive sometimes!”

Speaking at the launch, Rohit said, “From my 15 years of experience in film journalism, I have realised one thing: everyone wants to know more and more about Bollywood. So I thought of putting my experiences on paper for all those who love or hate Bollywood. Of course, I have made a fiction story out of it so that it entertains the reader. I Hate Bollywood is like a masala film, it has action, drama and romance!”

The novel takes an interesting look at Bollywood from a reporter’s point of viewBorn and brought up in Chembur, a Mumbai suburb, in the ’80s, Raghu Kumar has his first brush with filmstars as a child. Ever since, he is intrigued by the workings of Bollywood. In the ’90s, Raghu is hired by popular film journalist Rajeev Mehra for the newspaper The News, where his big story is an interview of yesteryear star Parveen Babi. Thus starts his tryst with journalism. He then moves on to reporting for news channels, where he has his own programme.

But a trap is laid by a senior colleague to trip him up and he walks right into it. It takes him two years to bounce back. Despite doing well, hobnobbing with top filmstars and getting invited to the best parties in town, Raghu still hates Bollywood.

Rohit Khilnani is the Entertainment Editor at Headlines Today. He specialises in Bollywood and has worked closely with the who’s who of the Hindi film industry. He started his career as a freelance writer for India’s leading newspapers, including The Times of India and The Indian Express. He has previously worked for NDTV and CNN-IBN.

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Mumbai gets a new film club, courtesy Osianama

Two new clubs – for cinema and vintage automobiles – come to Mumbai, with a premiere of Hindi film ‘Baby’.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

After months of deliberation, Mumbai has finally been chosen as the first venue for Osianama, India’s pioneering cultural centre, with the launch of the first two (of nine) clubs focusing on Indian and world cinema, and vintage and classic automobiles, at the iconic art-deco Liberty Cinema.

Tomorrow, January 23, will see Osianama inaugurate the film ‘club’, titled ‘Cinefan’ with the premiere of Neeraj Pandey’s film, Baby. On Sunday, January 25, Pandey and the film’s lead actor Anupam Kher will also conduct a masterclass for film enthusiasts and students.

Osianama plans to be the nerve-centre for the exhibition, edutainment, screening and knowledge for the arts, auto, cinema, culture and the preservation of its heritage. It complements the vast emerging online knowledgebase – osianama.com – “to rebuild the educational global platform for India’s cultural civilisation”.

Osianama Chairman Neville TuliNeville Tuli, Chairman of Osianama, states that Osianama embraces nine membership-driven cultural clubs under its umbrella which will be inaugurated step by step between January 2015 and March 2016. The Osianama ‘clubs’ are Vintage and Classic Automobiles; Cinefan; Antiquities and Fine Arts Appreciation; Books and Poetry; Photography; Architectural Heritage and Preservation; All Creatures Great and Small and Animal Welfare; Design, Craft and Popular Cultures, and Sporting Heritage.

“Osianama is starting with the launch of the first two clubs immediately, followed by the Fine Arts Club and Books and Poetry Club in April, when our activities begin on a daily basis,” Tuli explains.

The Osianama Cinefan Club will host premieres of over 50 top quality films from India and the best of world cinema in its first year. It will also organise 12 major exhibitions (such as On Orson Welles, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, etc. apart from exhibiting Polish poster design from the 1950-70s, Japanese aesthetics and the Samurai, Sci-Fi and horror designs of the 1950-60s, and also host related discussions, master classes and debates with a focus on Hollywood, Indian and world cinema.

Tuli says, “This has been a pivotal institutional step of one’s vision for the past 20 years. Few, if any, cultural institutions, have been built in this world with such independence from patronage, sponsorship and donations. We have always envisaged art, culture and its heritage as India’s greatest assets which will balance and nurture both economic and religious forces once having built its own material infrastructure with daily financial independence.”

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Maharashtra rocks to Prof Walter Spink

The feted scholar and historian took centrestage at the 2nd Annual Archaeology of Maharashtra conference, with several luminaries in attendance.
by Shubha Khandekar

It was a ruthless demolition of the Ganges-centric view of Indian history and of a Shivaji-centric one of Maharashtara, as speaker after speaker, both eminent and green-horns, rose to recreate the enchanted and enchanting, but unsung cosmos humming with life, incredibly rich materially and culturally, in and around the rock cut caves of Maharashtra, spanning nearly a millennium of artistic activity in and around the region.

The raison d’être of this devastation process was Prof Walter Spink, eminent scholar and professor emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in whose honour the Centre for Extra Mural Studies (CEMS) of the Mumbai University and the India Study Centre (INSTUCEN) jointly organised ‘Rock-cut Caves of Maharashtra,’ the 2-day 2nd Annual Archaeology of Maharashtra (International) Conference, at the Kalina campus of Mumbai University on January 17 and 18, 2015. The conference was part of the annual Archaeology Day celebrations pioneered by the CEMS in 2012.

Spink“It is staggering to see how much we don’t know,” said Prof Spink, who has just put down in seven volumes (8th forthcoming), 60 years of his intensive and seminal research on Ajanta, extolled at the valedictory session as ‘Ajanta-charita’ (a biography of Ajanta) by Dr Geri Malandra, author of The Unfolding of a Mandala, on the evolution of art forms at Ellora, who engaged him in a one-on-one at the end of day one. Asked what more needs to be done on Ajanta, “volume 9,” he replied, without batting an eyelid. He will be 87 this February 2015.

Prof Spink’s best known – and most controversial – contribution to the field, is his whittling down of the chronology of the second phase of the Ajanta Caves to a mere 15 years, from 462 to 477 of the Common Era. During this brief span political disturbance drove a frenzied spate of devotional activity, culminating in the exquisite paintings and sculpture at Ajanta, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The assassination of Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka dynasty, according to Prof Spink, brought the carving as well as the golden age of Indian history, to an abrupt end.

Prof Spink made use of details of circumstantial evidence at Ajanta to arrive at his conclusions. His keynote address provided a brief but razor sharp glimpse into the unique nature and depth of his inquiry. He showed how his study of some 180 doors (that no longer exist) and his investigation into how they were hung, helped him establish the relative chronology of the caves with fool-proof accuracy.

Reconstruction of chronology is a major challenge for ancient Indian history because the original sources are often muddled, misleading or mum.

Of the 1200 rock cut caves in India, no less than 1000 are located in Maharashtra, because the hard volcanic basalt rock from which the monasteries, temples, and intricate carvings are made is in abundance in the region and countless poets have eulogised this region as a land of rocks. “Rock cut art of Maharashtra has played a major role in the development of varied art forms all over the Deccan and beyond,” said Dr A P Jamkhedkar, former director of state archaeology and renowned scholar of art history, Jainism, epigraphy and archaeology. “And it is Walter’s phenomenal energy, methodological precision and passion that have inspired two generations of scholars to explore the vast pre-Shivaji and extra-Gangetic span of history, which we can see blossoming with such extraordinary vibrancy at this conference.”

Prof Spink is admired and respected as much for his academic integrity and methodological purity as for his endearing simplicity and gentle, overabundant sense of humour. Every speaker had an Stalwarts at the conferenceanecdote or two of his or her personal encounter with Prof Spink to share with the audience, showing the warm though professional bonds he has forged and nurtured over the past six decades. Thus, while Prof M K Dhavalikar, former director of Deccan College celebrated the golden jubilee of his association with Prof Spink, Dr Alone of JNU, who disagrees with Prof Spink on many issues, recalled how the octogenarian harangued him into reading up before coming for discussions at the now famous site seminars initiated by Prof Spink. Dr Kurush Dalal of the newly set up Centre for Archaeology at the CEMS recalled how Prof Spink pointed his flashlight at a small fragment of a chisel, left in a dingy corner of a barely begun cave at Ajanta by an artisan some 1500 years ago, and Dr Manjiri Bhalerao gratefully acknowledged that it was Prof. Spink’s work that drove her up rocks and into them.

Indeed, boundaries of time and space dissolved as the romance of rock cut art and its derivatives in lands as far as Sri Lanka, slowly unfolded before the rapturous audience. Dr Shreekant Pradhan’s presentation magically transformed the paintings of Ajanta into the sculpture of Amaravati and vice versa in a seamless blend, while Dr Anura Manatunga of Sri Lanka transported the audience to the emerald island to witness the debt that Sigiriya owes to Ajanta. Dr G K Mane credited the origin of rock cut caves to the preliterate megalithic societies in Vidarbha while Dr Abhijit Dandekar showed how sculpture nails down the rise of monks as intermediaries between Lord Buddha and the lay devotee. Dr Viraj Shah showed how the Jaina caves were sustained more with popular support as against the royal patronage received by the Buddhist caves whereas Dr Tejas Garge elaborated on the rock-cut moat around the Daulatabad fort, the one and only instance of traditional skills of regional craftsmen being harnessed for the first time for a military purpose during mediaeval times.

This explosion of scholarly activity is indeed a tribute that Prof Spink has richly earned. One hopes fondly, however, for the day when academic knowledge would become popular folklore, and that’s when scholarship will be truly vindicated.

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Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pt Shivkumar Sharma enthrall at concert

The two legendary Hindustani classical musicians came together to raise funds for a river-side girls’ school and a divinity centre.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Two leading lights of the Hindustani classical music scene came together in Mumbai recently.

Anand Trust, a charitable organisation, brought together the legendary maestros of Santoor and Tabla – Pandit Shivkumar Sharma accompanied by Ustad Zakir Hussain, for a concert at Nehru Centre, Worli.

Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Ustad Zakir Hussain, the world’s greatest performers on Santoor and Tabla respectively, are two legends of Indian music who have collaborated together since the early 1970s. Panditji has been the pioneer of the Santoor and is credited to introduce the instrument to the Indian Classical repertoire. Tabla genius Ustad Zakir Hussain is one of the most famous and recognisable names in the Indian classical and world music movement. Winners of innumerable amounts of accolades, both musicians have mesmerised and touched millions of hearts the world over, with the finest music they have produced together and individually.

The peerless, mystical and compelling musical duo created a musical symphony by performing together at Nehru Centre Auditorium. Proceeds from the concert will be used to aid and support Shree MA Anandamayee Kanyapeeth Girls School situated on the banks of the river Ganga at Varanasi, and the Anandamayee Divinity Center being built on the banks of river Narmada at Bhimpura. The boarding school for girls is run on the ancient Gurukul system and runs only on donations as education, boarding lodging, etc is gratis. The Anandamayee Divinity Center will have a meditation hall and rooms for ascetics and senior citizens who wish to come here for spiritual retreats.

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Attend: Flower show at Marine Drive

In a city fast losing its green cover, this plant and flower show is sure to gladden you. Don’t miss.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Mumbai city is currently inundated with cratered roads and accompanying debris and filth. Ordinarily, too, the city has long given up the green cover it used to enjoy to large plots of land housing residential and office buildings.

So in the midst of this concrete jungle, any respite in the form of plants and flowers is surely a welcome change.

Yesterday, the Governor of Maharashtra Ch. Vidyasagar Rao inaugurated a flower and plant Show organised by ‘I Love Mumbai’ on Marine Drive, Mumbai. The exhibition houses several varieties of flowering and non-flowering plants, which are on sale as well. The showing is on till January 17, 2015.

Ch Vinodha, wife of the Governor, Nana Chudasama, Founder of ‘I Love Mumbai’, Shaina NC and Sardar Tara Singh, MLA were among those present on the occasion.

Head to the plant and flower show at Service Road outside Wilson Gymkhana, next to Taraporewala aquarium, Marine Drive, Mumbai.

(Pictures courtesy Raj Bhavan, Mumbai)

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‘Being Human’ at school’s dramatics event

The Worli based DY Patil International School’s annual Dramatics competition drew members of actor Salman Khan’s family and other celebs.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Two days ago, DY Patil International School, Worli, held their Annual Inter-house Dramatics Competition at the YB Chavan Auditorium near Mantralaya. Film actor Salman Khan’s ‘Being Human’ charitable trust associated with the event, the theme of which was ‘Being human’.

From L-R) Sohail Khan and Vatsal Sheth with student at DY Patil International School Annual show Being HumanThe show was held as a part of the middle, secondary and high school annual show.

Over 100 students from four houses, Red, Yellow, Green and Blue, of the school participated in the competition. Salman’s brother Sohail Khan and actor Vatsal Sheth judged the performances. The exciting dramas were performed by the children with the support of digital sound, display and special effects.

Other celebrities to attend were Atul and Alvira Agnihotri, as did the school’s Principal Dr Meena Mahadevan, DY Patil International Schools Head Farzana Dohadwala, parents and other invitees.

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