Nishant Chhinkwani

To say I watched my first IPL game of the season would be overstating the facts. I happened to catch the 2nd half of a lukewarm Mumbai Indians vs Gujarat Titans affair marred by unseasonal rains (much needed relief in Mumbai!) till it became exciting in the last few overs. I hadn’t tuned in to watch the game. You see, my significant other had one of her biggest marketing campaigns coming out, and I was just eager to play the dutiful partner. 


Cue, an ad talking about how the race to the play-...

Lalgarh and the Legend of Kishanji: Tales from India’s Maoist Movement is not a brilliant read, but that’s not why I picked up the book at the Indira Gandhi Airport domestic terminal. The prose is neither smooth nor beautiful and it’s not really the work of somebody adept at using the English language. Nevertheless, the book grips you. Like in many other art forms, Lalgarh is proof that content is often more powerful than mere style.

The author, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, is a veteran journalist

Unlike so many eulogists penning down their two bits on the internet, I do not claim to know Suzette Jordan well. My only contact with her had been a few phone calls that I had made to garner an interview after the whole debacle, where she was denied entry for being the ‘ ’. That and the fact that we shared a few mutual friends who would update me from time to time about the meetings and the protests in which she stood shoulder to shoulder with them, with a proud bearing, befitting of the word s

Imagine you’re a writer on vacation in an exotic place, say Salamanca in Spain. Oh wait, that’s actually not possible. Writers don’t get paid so much that they could take a vacation in an exotic locale.

So let’s do this again.

Imagine you’re a screenplay writer/actor/director based out of California on a vacation in an exotic place, say Salamanca in Spain. You’re sitting in a Bodega, minding your business, drinking tapas or tequila or mojito or whatever catches your fancy. You see an exquisite

When Bacardi NH7 Weekender Festival came to Kolkata last year, they said they were overwhelmed by the response. So, they decided to do one better.

This year the four city music festival kick-started on November 1 at the beautiful Nicco Park, Kolkata that turned out to be a weekend of 39 artists, five stages and a whole lotta fun!

At 01:30 P.M. on a lazy Saturday, Nicco Park Grounds was abuzz with last minute activity as the organisers and their crew seemed to leave no stone unturned for a glit

Kolkata, erstwhile Calcutta, has been in a constant state of economic stagnation for a long time now. The new government, which enjoyed a massive victory over the 35-year-old (as old as the hills themselves) previous government, has done little to help the city break out of the stalemate it is currently stuck with. Make no mistake, the city is still a behemoth, albeit, one on the decline for a very long time. Industries are past their prime, new start ups are virtually nonexistent, jobs are few,

“People ask the question…. What’s a RocknRolla? And I tell ‘em- it’s not about the drums, drugs and hospital drips, oh no. There’s more there than that, my friend.”

This hits the nail right where it fits.

Somewhere in the thin long shadows of the madly melodramatic/infectiously bubbly/sometimes invariably bad cacophony called Bollywood music, lurks an infant independent Indian rock scene, biding its time to burst out in the open. For now, it is so underground, that it seems like it has a diffe