Logbook of a Screenwriter
It’s bizarre how some songs stick to your head. Like this one, C Funk from Popcult. I heard it quite by accident – since Gaurab ‘Gaboo’ Chatterjee is the percussionist of the band, and he remains a blast from my now largely defunct past in Calcutta. I used to assist his father Gautam Chatterjee in my early twenties. Gautam-da, a…
The theme puja I covered on 100 years of Bengali Cinema has been awarded the best creative pandal in Delhi NCR.Kudos to the entire team of Prantic Cultural, Indirapuram. And a special thanks to Tapash Maity, the artist, for spending so much time with me. That’s one update I had to make upfront. Now for the ‘making’ story… NOSTALGIA REVISITED…
Soumik Sen is the friend who gave me a Woody Allen omnibus as a marriage gift. Whether the gesture had some kind of symbolism I can’t say. It’s just that I continue reading it, till this day, when I am out of wits. The way I remember my friend and colleague Soumik is very different from what he is now.…
My friend Nishi happens to be quite an inexplicable person; even while we were in the university together I often wondered how she managed to pack so much into a single day of standard dimensions, and still remain cheerful and uncomplaining about almost everything around her. I still do not have an answer to that. She loves to travel; and…
There’s absolutely no reason why advertising legend Stanley Pinto should give me an interview. Yes, I had infrequently tried my hand at advertising copy writing, rather unsuccessfully. The fact that I did that to tide over my frequent bouts of depression as a natural fallout of being a documentary script writer, isn’t a strong enough reason to impress him –…
There’s something disconcerting about Vincent Van Gogh that has always attracted me, even while I was in no position to understand the depth or the significance of his work. I might still be not qualified enough to even appreciate him, but what to do; that enigmatic pull has only increased with time…!!! Is it about his seemingly abandoned brush strokes?…
It’s not every day that you get to interview someone like Farrukh Dhondy. All I can say, films he has worked in have been films that inspired my very early thoughts about choosing a career in screenwriting. I remember breaking down the ravine sequences of ‘Bandit Queen’ when I was barely 20 something old – to learn editing and sequence…
What was meant to be a social media joke has exploded big time!!! Storm Area 51 was a Facebook event dated June 27, created by US college student and Game-streamer Matty Roberts, planned for September 20, 2019. That’s about one week from now. The idea is – to mass-invade a top secret US Military base in search of extraterrestrial ‘aliens’;…
Every writer of every genre I can think of has something in common; we all need readers. What’s the use of writing if there’s no one to read them? I have been to a couple of shoots for Room to Read, an international NGO that works in the area of early literacy interventions – among other things. To start with,…
Personally, I am not a big fan of adventure shows; they are too realistic for my comfort. But then, when a show featuring a superstar anchor and a super-busy guest breaks all previous records, and it’s shot in India, one has to sit up and take notice. Ever since I saw the Discovery Episode of Man Vs Wild, I was…
