Cutting a dashing figure in a three-piece pinstripe suit Shashi Kapoor stood in the large porch of a famous bungalow in Bombay’s Juhu area. His right hand was in the pocket of his pleated trousers and left dangling from a lower pocket of his fully buttoned-up vest. The only detail missing was a retinue of obsequious servants. In the city’s polyester humidity Kapoor did not seem to be breaking into a sweat.
By Vikas Datta- Whenever Hindi filmmakers needed a canny yet commanding police officer who could devise strategies to outsmart criminals, tackle emotional subordinates, or just serve as a reasonable authority figure, there was one man they could rely on. Sayedna ‘Iftekhar’ Ahmed Sharif, famously called Iftekhar, with his chiseled features (including prominent cheekbones), air of authority, […]
In the passing at age 79 of the disgraced former president, General Pervez Musharraf the world has witnessed the end of a quintessential Pakistani strongman whose perpetual angst was against India, but whose delusions of influence were global.
The great sarod maestro and musician Ali Akbar Khan told me once this about Rahul Dev Burman, “Pancham (R D Burman) could pretty much do anything with music. He just lived music.” That was sometime in 1999, at Khan’s music academy in San Rafael, California where I had gone to interview him.
