Anupama Chopra’s book on Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan may have garnered all the media attention because of her connections but Stephen Alter has written the superior book in Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Moviemaking.

Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief captures the spirit and essence of Bollywood better than any other book we’ve read lately on the Hindi movie industry.

Written against the backdrop of the making of Hindi film Omkara, director Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of the Bard’s play Othello, Bollywood Love Thief provides not just an elaborate look into Bollywood style moviemaking but also a bird’s eyeview of the entire Hindi film industry and some of its dramatis personae.

From the Mahurat (the first shot of a Bollywood production) to star tantrums and the stars’ fitness trainers to star salaries, Alter Continue Reading…

Embattled Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf has agreed to step down as the country’s military chief before the upcoming elections.

In a deal reached with Pakistan Peoples Party leader Benazir Bhutto, Musharraf is also said to have agreed to drop corruption charges against Bhutto and other politicians.

General Musharraf, who seized power from the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif via a military coup in October 1999, and his cronies have been holding secret talks with Benazir Bhutto for several months.

Daughter of the country’s late Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto, who was hanged by another Pakistan military man Zia Ul-Haq, Benazir Bhutto has been living in exile in London.

Benazir was dismissed as the country’s Prime Minister on charges of corruption in November 1996.

General Musharraf has been under considerable U.S. pressure to get a better handle over the deteriorating law and order situation in Pakistan, a haven for Islamic radicals.

Indian movies will earn $208 million (Rs 850 crore) in 2007 in the overseas market, India’s Minister for Information and Broadcasting P.R.Dasmunsi told the country’s parliament on Wednesday.

Last year, Indian movies are said to have earned $171 million in the overseas markets.

Indian movies in Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and other languages are usually grand spectacles with dances, songs, garish costumes and occasionally stolen Hollywood plots.

Two recent Bollywood hits - Partner and Heyy Babyy - are ripoffs of successful Hollywood plots.

Bollywood and regional language movies are very popular with the large Indian diaspora in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia and elsewhere.

In the U.S., Indian movies are Continue Reading…

After several years of displacing high-paying U.S. IT jobs through its low cost Indian outsourcing operations, Azim Premji’s Wipro Technologies is now throwing a few crumbs to the Americans.

Wipro Technologies said Monday that it’s setting up a new software development center in Atlanta that would hire 200 employees in the first year and grow to 500 in the third year of operation.

When you consider that Wipro has in excess of 72,000 employees with over 53,000 in IT services and products group alone, the Atlanta center is utterly insignificant and has to be seen in the context of Indian IT companies facing criticism from U.S. lawmakers for some of their practices.

Indian IT companies have come under fire in the U.S. because their outsourcing operations have led to thousands of American software programmers losing their jobs.

Indian companies like Wipro, Infosys and TCS also routinely Continue Reading…