King of Bollywood

BY ANDREW MOODY “Shah Rukh Khan is the face of a glittering new India. He is a modern-day god. On streets in India, his posters are sold alongside those of religious deities. Shrines have been erected in his name. For Indians and the varied non-Indian lover of popular Hindi cinema, Shah Rukh is bigger than Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt combined. Over fifteen years and … Continue reading King of Bollywood

Better the Devil You Know

BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Brit-bashing in India is on the rise. Well, let’s say we deserve it. For years us Brits hammered you Indians. As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in The Discovery of India, the ransacking of India the British would come to call trade was in fact “plunder”. Nehru describes how the “Pagoda Tree”—or the tree of money—”was shaken again and again until the most terrible famines … Continue reading Better the Devil You Know