The best movies of the year

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Truth hasn't just been stranger than fiction this year; it's been better, with documentaries emerging as some of the strongest -- and best-reviewed -- films so far.

Forget blockbusters -- go for documentaries.Read more

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Dravid's recall: a knee-jerk reaction

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Once again, youth has been jettisoned, the system has been done away with, journalist's Saturdays have been ruined and, quite amazingly, Rahul Dravid is back in the one-day team. The same Dravid who was dumped twice over the last four years and overlooked for the World Cup, a chance he silently pined for. WTF?

The decision, we are told, is a pragmatic, immediate one: the team is marred by injury and needs Dravid's vault of international experience - he is the seventh-highest run-scorer of all time, with 10,765 runs in 339 matches - and his innate ability to scrap and hold together an innings. 

But the man in question is 38 years and 207 days and hasn't played an ODI since September 2009, after being recalled two years from being dropped. The scenario then? India's young hopefuls had failed to cope in testing conditions in the lead-up to the Champions Trophy in 2009. The scenario now? Injury to Yuvraj Singh, Cheteshwar Pujara's absence through injury, the apparent n…
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Oakville - our field of dreams

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We each have our field of dreams. The space where we first really took to cricket, where we played the game because we just loved the sound of ball (rubber, tennis, cork, whatever) on ball, where we could square-drive like our heroes (Dravid, for me) and mimic bowling actions and try our hands at legspin or left-arm pace and try to intimidate and flourish, and where we could - for an hour, a day - escape the drudgery of school and chores. Maybe it was a parking lot or a sandlot, a maidaan, an open field, a side street, a gulli, a stadium, an terrace. You know what I'm talking about.

For me, that field was a beaten up, run down former tennis court tucked away between the magnificent deodar and handsome Indian Chestnut tree and sturdy Himalayan Oak and serene maple trees. A little piece of heaven where in days of yore British, American and Canadian missionaries spent sunny summer afternoons playing tennis and rounders but which by the time my buddies and I took over had withered int…
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"Yeh hai Bruce Lee ka bhai, Choos Lee."

"Kutte ko billi ka salaam. Meeeeowwww."

If you've heard those two hilarious lines and can't place where you did, chances are you heard someone else use them. If you've seen Peecha Karo and can automatically place the source, well then all I have to say is SALAAM ... minus the meeeeowwww.

I recently got my hands on a copy of Peecha Karo, Pankaj Parashar's 1986 laugh riot starring Farooq Sheikh, Amjad Khan, Roma Manik, Rajendra Nath, Rajesh Puri, Anupam Kher, Viju Khote and, in a comedic pairing to rival their antics in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Ravi Baswani and Satish Shah as the bumbling secret agents, Hari Giridhara and Giri Haridhara.

This movie is up there with JBDY and Andaz Apna Apna. Surely the climax of AAA would not have been possible without Peecha Karo (go see it, it's on YouTube and available on Flipkart). The film is riddled with subtle (there's a No Smoking sign in a massive haystack in the middl…
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