Katyayani Shankar Bajpai, the veteran diplomatist who died last Sunday, was virtually unique among high-ranking Indians in being able to disagree without being disagreeable. I could not have been more...

Not merely did Rao have a new finance minister, he also had a radically new economic policy. The nation had made a 180-degree turn. Mukherjee was history's baggage. Still he got another innings wh...

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Dancer and choreographer Amala Shankar died in her sleep of age-related ailments on Friday. She was 101. The end came at 7.30am at her Kasba home, Udayan Kalakendra, named after her husband, legendar...

Alokananda Roy Amala Shankar to the world was “mashima”. She is related to me. Mamata Shankar is my maima (aunt). I have seen her since my teens and I was always in awe of her. I have alw...

Marie Fredriksson, lead singer of Roxette, the Swedish pop duo that briefly ruled the American charts in the 1980s and 1990s with dramatically lovelorn ballads and catchy up-tempo singles, died on Mon...

Mohammed Zahoor Hashmi, better known as Khayyam, left for the great blue yonder on Monday. At the risk of rehashing a cliché, Khayyam’s music will live on, not kabhi kabhie, but eternally, thanks t...

A very successful Delhi artist once wondered aloud to me why Bengal artists of the 1960s and 70s bothered to produce the grim images of hunger and poverty that few ever appreciated and which had even ...

Rip Torn, who made his reputation in the works of Tennessee Williams and played roles as diverse as Walt Whitman, Richard Nixon and Judas Iscariot before earning his greatest fame as a bullying produc...

Bina doodh aur shakkar ki chai kya chai hoti hai?!” Irrfan Khan was appalled at my request for ‘liquor tea’ at a nondescript dhaba somewhere on the Calcutta-Durgapur highway. It was a blistering...