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The man of simple
lines
By H.K. Dua
Editor-in-Chief
Those
were bad times in India. Indira Gandhi had placed the country
under emergency raj. Thousands of opposition leaders were arrested
after midnight on June 25, 1975 and sent to undisclosed destinations. A severe press
censorship was imposed. Electricity of newspaper offices was switched
off; the printing presses were locked. No one knew what would be the
shape of things to come. The mood across the country was of anxiety
and uncertainty. Vidya Charan Shukla had
been asked to take over the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Apparently, Mrs Gandhi and her son Sanjay thought that he would do the
job ruthlessly and Inder Gujral whom he had replaced would not. Shukla
thought of addressing a press conference clearly to pass on the
emergency message.
Queen of ‘guilty
pleasures’
Michelle Nichols
British
author Jackie Collins is still inadvertently teaching teenage
girls about sex through her steamy novels that have seen her regularly
grace bestseller lists since her first book was published 40 years
ago. Collins — who refuses to reveal how old she is, except to say
that she is still several years shy of 70 — released her 26th novel,
"Married Lovers," in the United States on Tuesday.
Spider as
‘architect’
Black
widow spiders spin a deadly web when they are hungry, and a
fortress to have a better protection from predators when they are
sated with food, according to a new study conducted at the University
of Akron in Ohio. The study showed that the spiders fed daily with
crickets spun tangled masses of non-sticky silk. They also found that
similar-size spiders, when starved for a week, tended to spin sheets
of silk connected to the ground by taut, sticky strands.
Water on Moon
Life
on Moon could someday be a reality — thanks to scientists who
have discovered evidence of water on the Earth’s natural satellite.
A fresh analysis of volcanic glass collected during the Apollo
missions in the 1970s has revealed that the Moon’s parched surface
has water hidden beneath it, a major finding that dispels the notion
that the Moon is dry.
Lama land
Leh, with monasteries
perched on rocky crags and prayer flags fluttering in the air, may
have been affected by commercialism, but it still retains a pristine
charm, says Mukesh Khosla
As
the plane begins its descent one can see a scattered township,
the gurgling River Indus and the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas.
Leh is now firmly on the tourist map. This place, one of the most
inhospitable and unforgiving mountain ranges, is less than an hour
from Delhi.
Let viewers decide
who is a better Bhishma: Ronit Roy
Ronit Roy can rightly
be called the superstar of Indian television. The actor, who started
his career with a little-known film Jaan Tere Naam, has
achieved iconic status in the television industry today. Be it Rishab
Bajaj in Kasauti Zindagi Kay or Mihir Virani in Kyun Ki Saas
Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, he has been a hit. Srabanti
Chakrabarti talks to Ronit Roy, who plays the role of Bhishma
in Ekta Kapoor’s Kahani
Hamarey Mahabharat Ki
Royal suite
The
Durbar Suite of the Raj Palace Hotel, Jaipur, has been voted
Asia’s Leading Suite at the World Travel Awards ceremony held
recently at Shanghai. A total of 167,000
travel professionals, including 110,000 travel agents worldwide,
voted. Other Indian suites to make it to the top ten included Kohinoor
Suite at The Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur, Maharaja Suite at The Leela
Palace Kempinski, Bangalore, Presidential Villa at Kumarakom Lake
Resort and Royal Imperial Suite at The Imperial, New Delhi.
Best of East
The 10th Osian’s
Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, which concludes in New
Delhi today, saw the screening of some of the world’s greatest
films, writes Shoma A. Chatterji
What
do films like Johnnie To’s Sparrow, Wong
Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights and Mumbai Cutting have
in common? All these films featured at the 10th
Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema which concludes
today. They feature among the over 150 films from Asia and the Arab
world. This year’s festival, held in Siri Fort and Alliance
Fran`E7aise in New Delhi, brought together more than 40 short fiction
films for the first time.
‘Bollywood is
getting better’
Radhika Bhirani
Anupam
Kher, who’s experimented with different film genres as an
actor and director, feels that the quality of scripts, cinematography
and screenplays in Hindi films hasn’t gone down but actually
improved over the years. "I don’t think Bollywood is going
through a bad phase. Instead, I think it is in its golden time right
now," said Anupam.
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