Lali

I have a favourite Aamir Khan story that should have absolutely been the crown jewel of my Bollywood book, if I ever get around to writing one. And given that I spent 12 years in the trenches as a Hindi film journalist and critic for The Telegraph, believe me, I have quite a few stories. But this one. This one is different. Dhobi Ghat had just released. I reviewed it for t2, the entertainment supplement of The Telegraph. I wrote that while Monica Dogra, Prateik Babbar, and Kriti Malhotra slipped into their characters like second skin — effortlessly, organically, exactly what Kiran Rao's debut needed — Aamir Khan stuck out like a sore thumb. He hadn't found the sur of the film. He was, in my honest critical opinion, miscast. The review ran on Saturday. Monday evening. Late. My phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number. "Hi Pratim, when can I call? Aamir." I went cold. I knew what film people do when you don't align with them creatively. They get vengeful. They get vindictive. They have long memories and longer grudges. And this wasn't just any film person. This was Aamir Khan. The perfectionist. The man who doesn't do anything without a reason. With slightly unsteady fingers, I typed back: "Hi Aamir, we can speak now." He called immediately. In that inimitable style of his — measured, unhurried, punctuated with those trademark pauses that make you hang on every single word — he said he had read my review. I braced myself. He said he completely agreed with me. I'm sorry — what? Aamir Khan had called me, a film critic, to say I was right about his performance being off. I couldn't process it. Here was one of the biggest stars in Indian cinema, a man with nothing to prove to anyone, voluntarily picking up the phone to validate a critic's assessment of his own shortcomings. The silence on my end must have been deafening. And then he said it. The line I will never forget: "I was the worst of the four." He ended the call with four words that have stayed with me ever since: "Keep writing what you feel." Years later, when I heard that he had auditioned for Kiran Rao's second film — Lapataa Ladies, which he was producing — and that she had ultimately gone with Ravi Kishen for the role instead, something clicked into place quietly inside me. No ego. No entitlement. Just a man who understood his own limitations well enough to let go. Nothing had changed. He was still that guy.

I have a favourite Aamir Khan story that should have absolutely been the crown jewel of my Bollywood book, if I ever get around to writing one. And given that I spent 12 years in the trenches as a Hindi film journalist and critic for The Telegraph, believe me, I have quite a few stories. But this one. This one is different. Dhobi Ghat had just released. I reviewed it for t2, the entertainment supplement of The Telegraph. I wrote that while Monica Dogra, Prateik Babbar, and Kriti Malhotra slipped into their characters like second skin — effortlessly, organically, exactly what Kiran Rao's debut needed — Aamir Khan stuck out like a sore thumb. He hadn't found the sur of the film. He was, in my honest critical opinion, miscast. The review ran on Saturday. Monday evening. Late. My phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number. "Hi Pratim, when can I call? Aamir." I went cold. I knew what film people do when you don't align with them creatively. They get vengeful. They get vindictive. They have long memories and longer grudges. And this wasn't just any film person. This was Aamir Khan. The perfectionist. The man who doesn't do anything without a reason. With slightly unsteady fingers, I typed back: "Hi Aamir, we can speak now." He called immediately. In that inimitable style of his — measured, unhurried, punctuated with those trademark pauses that make you hang on every single word — he said he had read my review. I braced myself. He said he completely agreed with me. I'm sorry — what? Aamir Khan had called me, a film critic, to say I was right about his performance being off. I couldn't process it. Here was one of the biggest stars in Indian cinema, a man with nothing to prove to anyone, voluntarily picking up the phone to validate a critic's assessment of his own shortcomings. The silence on my end must have been deafening. And then he said it. The line I will never forget: "I was the worst of the four." He ended the call with four words that have stayed with me ever since: "Keep writing what you feel." Years later, when I heard that he had auditioned for Kiran Rao's second film — Lapataa Ladies, which he was producing — and that she had ultimately gone with Ravi Kishen for the role instead, something clicked into place quietly inside me. No ego. No entitlement. Just a man who understood his own limitations well enough to let go. Nothing had changed. He was still that guy.

Too terrified to even name him. It's obvious he chooses to skip watching Dhurandhar

Mumbai could have built a modern coastal commuter railway moving 10× more people, like the Rodalies de Catalunya I rode in Barcelona. Instead, it chose a massive bridge in the sea for cars, the least efficient and most polluting way to move a city. 🚇🌊

So what exactly was looted from India? The Mughals didn't take the mountains. The British didn't cart away the rivers, the forests, the air, the lakes, the minerals. They couldn't. What they took was recoverable. What we've done to ourselves isn't. In 75 years of self-rule, we have managed to hollow out something they never could. We were handed a country and we handed it back to smaller, pettier versions of the same masters. We called it democracy. We called it progress. Decade after a decade, the politician became the new zamindar. The loot just changed its paperwork. Elections became the conduit. But the last decade. The unhinged last decade. That's when something else started rotting. Not just institutions or infrastructure or the economy. What started dying was something that others hold dearly. Decency. The basic willingness to see another person as a person. Hate turned into policy. Policy turned into pride. And a man who burned his neighbour's house started calling himself a patriot. A society that feels like an echo chamber built on a hollow. Every surface is noise. Nationalism without nation-building. Sentiment without sense. Propaganda wearing the facade of progress. The tragedy isn't just what was stolen. It's what we surrendered. Willingly. Enthusiastically. We didn't regress because someone forced us to. We regressed because we agreed to. And here we are. Standing exposed and bare, looted by our own.

Aneet Padda's sister Reet calls Dhurandhar, Kashmir Files, Kerala Story 'propaganda' films, calls out Priyanka Chopra for 'inability to clap' for Javier Bardem. also references 2002 riots. Immense respect.

Dhurandhar movies earning 1000 crore back to back starring Ranveer Singh, big intl project like Ramayana is on the cards with Ranbir Kapoor in it. Bollywood going big and making path breaking cinema with two of its biggest new age stars instead of doing same shit over the years and making cringe af shit or south/hollywood rip offs is what I dreamt of and I got it

Jawaharlal Nehru with Ravi Shankar and Satyajit Ray.