Dilli 6

I meant to write about this earlier. In fact, quite unlike me, I saw Dilli 6 on the second day of its release seated in the front row at the left. My spine took quite a twist. Thanks to Rahman's music, I happily endured my physical discomfort. Without doubt, he is at his best. If Slumdog M won the Oscars, this movie's soundtrack must be heard by the Americans. The movie opened beautifully but somewhere in the second half things got a bit mixed up with the kala bander and communalism and the moralising. I felt a bit let down but thanks to Sonam and her extended family, the cinematography and the editing, the film worked for me.

Calcutta Walks

Yesterday I took a walk through the bylanes of North Kolkata. I have been meaning to do this for quite sometime now. So when the opprtunity presented itself in the form of Iftekar and his Calcutta Walks, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I took in all the beautiful architecture of the old buildings, in the Sovabazar area, to my heart's content and captured them on film, and I decided to do a piece on Cal Walks for Kindle. Iftekar with his two other buddies are genuinely in love with their work and that really made all the difference. The enthusiasm was palpable and I learnt a lot. I was treated to a fabulous lunch at Anand (best South Indian restaurant in Kolkata, they say) and got to taste sweets at Chittaranjan, one of the best sweet shops of Kolkata. I hope to do the other walks sometime soon.