The Life and Times of Devika Rani

The Life and Times of Devika Rani PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789389152470
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description

The Life and Times of Devika Rani

The Life and Times of Devika Rani PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789389152470
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Get Book Here

Book Description


Dilip Kumar

Dilip Kumar PDF Author: Dilip Kumar
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
ISBN: 9381398968
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
An authentic, heartfelt and compelling narrative – straight from the horse’s mouth – that reveals for the first time numerous unknown aspects of the life and times of one of the greatest legends of all time who stands out as a symbol of secular India. Dilip Kumar (born as Yousuf Khan), who began as a diffident novice in Hindi cinema in the early 1940s, went on to attain the pinnacle of stardom within a short time. He came up with spellbinding performances in one hit film after another – in his almost six-decade-long career – on the basis of his innovative capability, determination, hard work and never-say-die attitude. In this unique volume, Dilip Kumar traces his journey right from his birth to the present. In the process, he candidly recounts his interactions and relationships with a wide variety of people not only from his family and the film fraternity but also from other walks of life, including politicians. While seeking to set the record straight, as he feels that a lot of what has been written about him so far is ‘full of distortions and misinformation’, he narrates, in graphic detail, how he got married to Saira Banu, which reads like a fairy tale! Dilip Kumar relates, matter-of-factly, the event that changed his life: his meeting with Devika Rani, the boss of Bombay Talkies, when she offered him an acting job. His first film was Jwar Bhata (1944). He details how he had to learn everything from scratch and how he had to develop his own distinct histrionics and style, which would set him apart from his contemporaries. After that, he soon soared to great heights with movies such as Jugnu, Shaheed, Mela, Andaz, Deedar, Daag and Devdas. In these movies he played the tragedian with such intensity that his psyche was adversely affected. He consulted a British psychiatrist, who advised him to switch over to comedy. The result was spectacular performances in laugh riots such as Azaad and Kohinoor, apart from a scintillating portrayal as a gritty tonga driver in Naya Daur. After a five-year break he started his ‘second innings’ with Kranti (1981), after which he appeared in a series of hits such as Vidhaata, Shakti, Mashaal, Karma, Saudagar and Qila.

The Life and Times of Nargis

The Life and Times of Nargis PDF Author: T. J. S. George
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Biography of Nargis Dutt, 1929-1981, Indian motion picture actress.

Fourteen Years with Boss

Fourteen Years with Boss PDF Author: Ashokamitran
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9385890840
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
Reminiscing of a time long lost, Fourteen Years with Boss gives a delightful insight into the workings of the Gemini Studios of Madras—one of the most influential film-producing organizations in India—and its founder, the brilliant and multifaceted S. S. Vasan. Filled with vivid sketches of actors, extras, directors and the ‘boss’, Ashokamitran recreates life at the studio so that it materializes in the reader’s mind with the perfect balance of humour and nostalgia.

Witness the Night

Witness the Night PDF Author: Kishwar Desai
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471101533
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
In a small town in the heart of India, a young girl, barely alive, is found in a sprawling house where thirteen people lie dead. The girl has been beaten and abused, and the house still smoulders from the fire that raked through it. The girl now awaits her trial for the murders that the local police believe she has committed. But an unconventional social worker, Simran Singh, is convinced of her innocence. As Simran begins to examine the circumstances around the case, she encounters a terrifying web of prejudice and deceit in which lives of women are endangered from birth. Brilliantly descriptive of tradition-bound Punjab, Kishwar Desai's debut novel introduces the feisty and independent Simran, whose determination to seek out the truth places her at odds with her environment. What she discovers will change her forever.

Those Days

Those Days PDF Author: Sunil Gangopadhyay
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9351187691
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 804

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Book Description
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award An award-winning novel that uses both vast panoramic views and lovingly reconstructed detail to provide an unforgettable picture of nineteenth-century Bengal. The Bengal Renaissance and the 1857 uprising form the backdrop to Those Days, a saga of human frailties and strength. The story revolves around the immensely wealthy Singha and Mukherjee families, and the intimacy that grows between them. Ganganarayan Singha's love for Bindubasini, the widowed daughter of the Mukherjees, flounders on the rocks of orthodoxy even as his zamindar father, Ramkamal, finds happiness in the arms of the courtesan, Kamala Sundari. Bimbabati, Ramkamal's wife, is left to cope with her loneliness. A central theme of the novel is the manner in which the feudal aristocracy, sunk in ritual and pleasure, slowly awakens to its social obligations. Historical personae interact with fictional protagonists to enrich the narrative. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the reformer; Michael Madhusudan Dutt, the poet; the father and son duo of Dwarkanath and Debendranath Tagore; Harish Mukherjee, the journalist; Keshab Chandra Sen, the Brahmo Samaj radical; David Hare and John Bethune, the English educationists—these and a host of others walk the streets of Calcutta again, to bring alive a momentous time.

Darlingji

Darlingji PDF Author: Kishwar Desai
Publisher: HarperCollins India
ISBN: 9788172236977
Category : Motion picture actors and actresses
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Biographies of Sunil Dutt,1930-2005 and Nargis Dutt, 1929-1981, Hindi motion picture actors.

The Flight of the Swans

The Flight of the Swans PDF Author: Devika D. Bai
Publisher: Monsoon Books
ISBN: 9814423262
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
The Flight of the Swans is a rich and fascinating family saga set in British India and Malaya. Cursed, and with blood on his hands, Captain Ramdas Rao Bhonsle is forced to flee Killa Fort, which has fallen to the British. A strange flight of swans signals his flight from Killa; a flight that will drive Ramdas and his family into further adversity. But great adversity spawns great dreams. Ramdas dreams of ousting the British from his motherland. His sons, the handsome and irascible Nilkanth and the plain and romantic Madhav dream of possessing the same girl, Tara Bai, who is the most beautiful courtesan in the land. And Ramdas’ granddaughter, blind Arundhati, dreams only of seeing one day. Woven into this tapestry is a lone white swan inextricably linked to the ebb and flow of the Bhonsles’ fortunes as they flee across India to Malaya.

The Longest Kiss

The Longest Kiss PDF Author: Kishwar Desai
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 935629478X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
She was India's first international superstar in the 1930s and 1940s. Astonishingly beautiful, prodigiously talented and a great-grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore, Devika Rani earned rave reviews for her first film, Karma. Shortly afterwards, she married Himansu Rai, and together they set up India's first truly professional studio, Bombay Talkies. Over the next few years, the studio became the launch pad for some of India's best-known talent, including Ashok Kumar, Leela Chitnis and Dilip Kumar. After Himansu's controversial death in 1940, Devika took over Bombay Talkies. She ran the studio with a steel hand, squashing all rebellion and constantly walking a tightrope when it came to the men around her. Then, one day, she met the handsome and reclusive Svetoslav Roerich, and, just like in a Hindi film, nothing was ever the same again. Devika died as she had lived, in the midst of controversy, and an enigma to most. In The Longest Kiss, for the first time, through her letters and documents, is pieced together the life that she kept away from the world. The romance and the abuse that characterized her marriage with Himansu, the struggle of being a woman at the helm of a hyper-male domain, the circuitous ways in which cinema found its feet in Bombay, and the soaring happiness and tragedy of a life lived on the edge, always.

Bombay Hustle

Bombay Hustle PDF Author: Debashree Mukherjee
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551673
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
From starry-eyed fans with dreams of fame to cotton entrepreneurs turned movie moguls, the Bombay film industry has historically energized a range of practices and practitioners, playing a crucial and compelling role in the life of modern India. Bombay Hustle presents an ambitious history of Indian cinema as a history of material practice, bringing new insights to studies of media, modernity, and the late colonial city. Drawing on original archival research and an innovative transdisciplinary approach, Debashree Mukherjee offers a panoramic portrait of the consolidation of the Bombay film industry during the talkie transition of the 1920s–1940s. In the decades leading up to independence in 1947, Bombay became synonymous with marketplace thrills, industrial strikes, and modernist experimentation. Its burgeoning film industry embodied Bombay’s spirit of “hustle,” gathering together and spewing out the many different energies and emotions that characterized the city. Bombay Hustle examines diverse sites of film production—finance, pre-production paperwork, casting, screenwriting, acting, stunts—to show how speculative excitement jostled against desires for scientific management in an industry premised on the struggle between contingency and control. Mukherjee develops the concept of a “cine-ecology” in order to examine the bodies, technologies, and environments that collectively shaped the production and circulation of cinematic meaning in this time. The book thus brings into view a range of marginalized film workers, their labor and experiences; forgotten film studios, their technical practices and aesthetic visions; and overlooked connections among media practices, geographical particularities, and historical exigencies.