"I've done three books and a documentary on Guru Dutt and he is always viewed as someone rather morose and internal and a sad man. And yet, there were moments of great joy. You see ... Read more
"I've done three books and a documentary on Guru Dutt and he is always viewed as someone rather morose and internal and a sad man. And yet, there were moments of great joy. You see it in his films. Why did he always include Johnny Walker? Because he had a sense of humour and a sense of fun and his films like Mr and Mrs 55 and Aar Paar are really wonderfully funny. This diary was to emphasize the lighter side of Guru Dutt. So there are various anecdotes from people who remembered that side of him" - Nasreen Munni Kabir, author, 'The Legacy of Guru Dutt; 2025 Diary' talks to Manjula Narayan about bringing out this diary to mark the film maker's centenary next year, the fantastic Hindi-Urdu writing of the 1950s, Guru Dutt's many extraordinarily productive working relationships with Abrar Alvi, Raj Khosla, Johnny Walker, VK Murthy and others, the self indulgence of Kagaz ke Phool, how his training in dance and choreography at the Uday Shankar Academy showed up in the kinetic movement of the camera in films like Pyaasa, the reproduction of some early letters to Geeta Dutt, and the aptness of Kaifi Azmi's statement that Guru Dutt thought with his eyes. Read more
"The taste and quality of the ingredients that some street vendors use can rival that of Michelin star restaurants. And that they make it all available at this price point is just ... Read more
"The taste and quality of the ingredients that some street vendors use can rival that of Michelin star restaurants. And that they make it all available at this price point is just shocking. Street vendors also have no qualms about feeding the food that they make to their own families. They don't store their food or refrigerate and reuse, all ingredients are fresh every day, there are no secrets, its made out in the open in front of the customer. Those are the big differences with the large chains. After doing this book, we've realised that we are much better off eating from the street than eating packaged food or even from fancy places" - Priya Bala and Jayanth Narayanan, authors, 'Bazaar Bites; Tales and Tastes of India's Street Foods' talks to Manjula Narayan about the fantastic sweets and savouries on offer on our streets including in tier 2 cities like Indore, Nagpur, Bhopal, Puri, Srinagar and Allahabad, among others, specialities like the hing kachori of Varanasi, the karela chaat of Gwalior, the ghirmit of Hubli Dharwad, the samosas of Bata Mangala in Odisha, the litti chokhas of Patna and the dosa diversity of Karnataka, and how street food needs to be properly recognised as an integral part of India's culinary heritage. Read more
"While I was translating this manuscript from Persian I realised that the food mentioned is very different from what's sold now as Mughal food. They had four masalas only. We have ... Read more
"While I was translating this manuscript from Persian I realised that the food mentioned is very different from what's sold now as Mughal food. They had four masalas only. We have now laced the mutton, chicken and fish with spices so that the real taste has disappeared. In those days, you could taste the meat. The food eaten by Jahangir and Nur Jahan was very different and I wanted people to know that what we are eating in the name of Mughal food is not really Mughal food" - Salma Yusuf Husain, translator, 'Alwan-e-Nemat; A Journey Through Jahangir's Kitchen' talks to Manjula Narayan about featured recipes that combine unlikely ingredients like the fish and banana curry, Mughal emperor Jahangir's love for Gujarati khichdi and rohu, his queen Nur Jahan's many culinary innovations including the creation of fruit yogurts and vibrantly coloured dishes, how Indian cooks in the imperial kitchen took Iranian and Central Asian recipes and completely transformed them, how they turned pulao into biryani by layering and roasting it, her own surprise on encountering the utterly rice-less biryani Isfahani during a visit to Iran, and why the vegetable biryani cannot be called a biryani at all. Read more
"Those who don't have a university or a high school for their languages are the ones who don't have economic resources. The poorest among the poor are linguistically deprived and a ... Read more
"Those who don't have a university or a high school for their languages are the ones who don't have economic resources. The poorest among the poor are linguistically deprived and also economically deprived. People say, 'What is the harm if many languages go and only some remain?' These are questions raised out of ignorance. Every language is a unique world view. The way every language defines space and time is unique. When languages die, we are denying ourselves the benefit of the diversity of unique world views. Diversity is necessary for the evolutionary process. By denying diversity, we are reducing our ability to go forward and meet new challenges" - GN Devy, author, 'India; A Linguistic Civilization' talks to Manjula Narayan about the emergence of a rich literature in many Adivasi languages in the 21st century, his work with the Linguistic Survey of India, language aphasia, the rise of Sanskrit, why the Harappan script still hasn't been deciphered, the tragedy of gadgets replacing parental interactions with children, and dyslexia and dysgraphia as conditions that indicate a step in the evolutionary process, among other things. Read more
"In the 1970s, Muslim characters in films were very different. In the 1990s, Roja opened the floodgates for films representing Muslims as terrorists. It was the first film which lo ... Read more
"In the 1970s, Muslim characters in films were very different. In the 1990s, Roja opened the floodgates for films representing Muslims as terrorists. It was the first film which looked at the identity of the enemy. Then, especially after the attacks of 9/11, there was a big change in the representation of Muslims in Hindi films. As for women, in many films, Muslim women are reduced to being victims of oppression always. Now, whatever is happening in the current sociopolitical scene is directly reflected on screen. I have tried to connect the politics of representation in Hindi films with contemporary politics. So my book isn't just film studies, it is also a political text" — Nadira Khatun, author, 'Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from Pran in Zanjeer to the saviour syndrome in Gully Boy, the Brahmanical stance of films like Secret Superstar and Lipstick Under my Burqa, the absence of films made by subaltern Muslims, the vanished Muslim Social of the 1970s and 80s, and much more. Read more
"The parapsychological element is very strong in Theyyam, which is an example of Indian shamanism. When you worship a Theyyam, you don't need an intermediary, a priest, like you do ... Read more
"The parapsychological element is very strong in Theyyam, which is an example of Indian shamanism. When you worship a Theyyam, you don't need an intermediary, a priest, like you do in a temple; here you can go into a direct dialogue with the Theyyam. 90 percent of the Theyyams are mother goddesses performed by men. And though a Theyyam performance is highly caste oriented, it can only be a success if every community of a particular area gives their support. So everybody joins together for it and if they have disputes, it is all settled before the Theyyam, during the performance" - KK Gopalakrishnan, author, 'Theyyam; Indian Folk Ritual Theatre' talks to Manjula Narayan about this living tradition of Kerala, the touching stories that are narrated, elements of ancestor and nature worship that are central to the pre-Brahmanical folk form, the paradox of it flourishing in northern Kerala where communism first sprouted in the state, the Muslim Theyyams of Malabar, the spectacle of the performances, and how it is, in a sense, a repository of the race memory of the people of the region. Read more
"She was my grandmother so I could have wanted to create a portrait of a person who was very fantastic and - she was fantastic and wonderful - but I didn't want to do anything tha ... Read more
"She was my grandmother so I could have wanted to create a portrait of a person who was very fantastic and - she was fantastic and wonderful - but I didn't want to do anything that wasn't factual that tried to whitewash anything she did - there ware controversial things about her and her academic life and how she went about things. I knew this from my own mother 's view of her. One of the reasons Thiago and I did get along was because we were very clear that we weren't going to do a hagiography" -- Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa, co-authors of 'Iru; the Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve' talk to Manjula Narayan about the pioneering Indian anthropologist, her time in 1920s Berlin where she did her PhD under racist anthropologist Eugin Fischer, her use of the Mahabharata and other ancient Indian texts to help her interpret contemporary questions about language, culture and religion in Indian society, Yugant, their own use of critical fabulation in the writing of this book, and the strange similarity between the sarcasm and dourness of the people of Berlin and of Karve's hometown, Pune! Read more
"In the West and in privileged pockets of India that have access to technology, we think technology is linear — first film, then TV, then video... But actually in India and in most ... Read more
"In the West and in privileged pockets of India that have access to technology, we think technology is linear — first film, then TV, then video... But actually in India and in most of the countries that form the global majority, obsolescence structures this. It is not like there is a linear progression of technology for everyone. A lot of people have access to tech which might not be current or new for a certain privileged class. One of my research sites was the Malegaon film industry. This was a DIY filmmaking culture where they made their own films, which had social messaging and were spoofs of Bollywood or Hollywood films. Analog video tech was the base infrastructure of this film industry. They used analog video to shoot and edit these films. It was really interesting that analog video, which was supposed to be very 1980s, 20 years later becomes the base for the industry in Malegaon. I saw this industry, as I was tracking it, changing from analog to digital and thought there seems to be a connection between the two. How can we understand digital culture through a historical perspective? I thought video might offer me clues to make sense of the present" - Ishita Tiwary, author, 'Video Culture in India; The Analog Era' talks to Manjula Narayan about her book that excavates an entirely forgotten cultural moment with its wedding videos, video libraries, godmen like Rajneesh who used the technology to gain an international following, video news magazines like Newstrack that documented everything from Mandal and Masjid to the militarization of Kashmir, and the video films featuring, among others, Aditya Pancholi and a pre-Rangeela Urmila Matondkar, that emerged from media magnate Nari Hira's company, Hiba. Read more
"British India was what had been annexed before 1857. The rest of it was princely India, which formed 45 percent of the subcontinent, almost half. At school, we learn about what ha ... Read more
"British India was what had been annexed before 1857. The rest of it was princely India, which formed 45 percent of the subcontinent, almost half. At school, we learn about what happened in British India but most of us don't know about what happened in the part ruled by rajas and nawabs even though it formed such a big part of the independence movement and transfer of power and so on. It's a key element of the story of independence but somehow, it doesn't figure in textbooks. The general idea we have is that the princely kingdoms were all backward and feudal. All of them were not like that. In fact, the first constitution in India was in a princely kingdom -- Baroda. Many princes were forward thinking — there was the Maharaja's temple entry proclamation in Travancore, some states like Mysore were industrialising... The idea that all of them were backward is not true. I have tried not to pass judgement. I have tried to humanise these people and see them from different perspectives...Nehru and Patel had nothing but disdain for the royal class but Patel was a practical person. He knew he had to get them on board to sigh their own death warrants. This book is a bit of history and geography. Had it not been for these events, the map of India would be very different. I have tried to not make it like reading a record but like watching a movie" - Mallika Ravikumar, author, '565; The Dramatic Story of Unifying India' talks to Manjula Narayan about how Sardar Patel, VP Menon and the hurriedly formed States Department managed to coax and, in some cases, force princely states like Tripura, Bikaner, Travancore, Bhopal, Jammu and Kashmir, Patiala and Hyderabad, among others, to join the Indian union in 1947. Read more
As HT Smartcast completes 5 amazing years, we are re-releasing the most loved episode from this podcast. "People who are powerful and wealthy are always complex and layered charact ... Read more
As HT Smartcast completes 5 amazing years, we are re-releasing the most loved episode from this podcast. "People who are powerful and wealthy are always complex and layered characters," says Anirudh Kanisetti, author, Lords of the Deccan, in this Books & Authors' episode with Manjula Narayan, about the ambitious, adventurous, charismatic and bloodthirsty medieval dynasties of southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas. Read more
