Khalid Mohamed

Jul 29, 2011

The man who shot the stars

Come Friday and he would have been 61. Since he’d started shunning celebration, chances are that he would have fled to an undisclosed spot for the day, far away from his ramble of old-worldly rooms on Hughes Road.
Gautam Rajadhyaksha chose to flee earlier. He was stressed out of late. The iconic photographer had complained of body ache, his doctor had advised immediate examination, but then a comprehensive course in photography for Pune’s Symbiosis College had just been templated.

Bollywood’s bad breath

There was a kind of hush. No one would enter the room, the ambulance was awaited. As a rookie reporter, I was assigned to cover the passing away of the silent era superstar Master Nissar. That was some three decades ago. The address was a micro-room in a chawl in the midst of a vegetable market on Dhobi Talao. A tin plate, a cracked cup of tea and a football-sized bundle of clothes were all that he owned.

In Bollywood, politics stays out of focus

Politics is to cinema what a mongoose is to a cobra. They don’t get along. In fact, it has to be a truly venturesome sort who treads the verboten terrain.
Take Prakash Jha. He couldn’t attract enough votes, in 2004 as well as 2009, at the Lok Sabha elections to
become a real-life neta. On screen, though, he seeks to rat-a-tat away at venal ministers, corrupt cops and their Rasputin-faced associates.