Stars from Another Sky

A mood board for Sujata Massey's The Star from Calcutta

As on my Substack

April, for me growing up, had always been either the start of summer holidays or the first month of a new academic year. This totally depends on where in India you grew up, and which school board ruled your life. But whether you were stuck at school, or at home, or out in the open, the sunny days just stretched on, long, warm and languid.

This April, though, it seemed like the month had other plans. I am in a part of India where the weather was all moody and shifty. I’d been expecting bright, hot days, but the last two weeks was nothing but rain and storms. Every day big, dark clouds, filled the sky, rolling in out of nowhere, with sudden hail pounding on the roof. I found myself in a sweatshirt pretty much daily.

With not much going on, I disappeared into books, my favourite kind of rainy weather activity. And the timing was just perfect, because a book that I had on my wish-list for a while just dropped, The Star from Calcutta, which is the fifth book in the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey.

I’ve sort of been crushing on Perveen for a while now, I wrote a piece gushing about the series last year.

April, for me growing up, had always been either the start of summer holidays or the first month of a new academic year. This totally depends on where in India you grew up, and which school board ruled your life. But whether you were stuck at school, or at home, or out in the open, the sunny days just stretched on, long, warm and languid.

This April, though, it seemed like the month had other plans. I am in a part of India where the weather was all moody and shifty. I’d been expecting bright, hot days, but the last two weeks was nothing but rain and storms. Every day big, dark clouds, filled the sky, rolling in out of nowhere, with sudden hail pounding on the roof. I found myself in a sweatshirt pretty much daily.

With not much going on, I disappeared into books, my favourite kind of rainy weather activity. And the timing was just perfect, because a book that I had on my wish-list for a while just dropped, The Star from Calcutta, which is the fifth book in the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey.

I’ve sort of been crushing on Perveen for a while now, I wrote a piece gushing about the series last year.

April, for me growing up, had always been either the start of summer holidays or the first month of a new academic year. This totally depends on where in India you grew up, and which school board ruled your life. But whether you were stuck at school, or at home, or out in the open, the sunny days just stretched on, long, warm and languid.

This April, though, it seemed like the month had other plans. I am in a part of India where the weather was all moody and shifty. I’d been expecting bright, hot days, but the last two weeks was nothing but rain and storms. Every day big, dark clouds, filled the sky, rolling in out of nowhere, with sudden hail pounding on the roof. I found myself in a sweatshirt pretty much daily.

With not much going on, I disappeared into books, my favourite kind of rainy weather activity. And the timing was just perfect, because a book that I had on my wish-list for a while just dropped, The Star from Calcutta, which is the fifth book in the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey.

I’ve sort of been crushing on Perveen for a while now, I wrote a piece gushing about the series last year.

April, for me growing up, had always been either the start of summer holidays or the first month of a new academic year. This totally depends on where in India you grew up, and which school board ruled your life. But whether you were stuck at school, or at home, or out in the open, the sunny days just stretched on, long, warm and languid.

This April, though, it seemed like the month had other plans. I am in a part of India where the weather was all moody and shifty. I’d been expecting bright, hot days, but the last two weeks was nothing but rain and storms. Every day big, dark clouds, filled the sky, rolling in out of nowhere, with sudden hail pounding on the roof. I found myself in a sweatshirt pretty much daily.

With not much going on, I disappeared into books, my favourite kind of rainy weather activity. And the timing was just perfect, because a book that I had on my wish-list for a while just dropped, The Star from Calcutta, which is the fifth book in the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey.

I’ve sort of been crushing on Perveen for a while now, I wrote a piece gushing about the series last year.

So picture this: it’s September 1922 in Bombay and Perveen is still the only woman lawyer in the city. We start off right in the middle of monsoons, so everything’s supremely damp and gloriously chaotic. The whole city’s pretty much drowned in puddles of murky water, and there’s this grim mood hanging over it. But nothing can stop Perveen from heading out to work. And she is doing it in those gorgeous green and yellow chiffon saris, all graceful and elegant as she steps around muddy puddles, dashing over for cover when the rain decides to come down without warning.

Her days are packed, leaving barely a calm moment for herself. She visits the coroner’s office, deals with racist colonial officers, dodges the judgy looks of her male peers. I love the quiet bits where we find Perveen daydreaming about her British beau, Colin, her cozy home and a niece she absolutely adores. Perveen’s no ordinary woman as the sole female lawyer, and so her life is made up of hectic, yes, but extraordinary bits which she manages with equal parts grace and grit.

The book kicks off with Perveen being assigned by her dad/boss/co-partner to help Rochna, this huge Calcutta actress who has just landed in Bombay with all the stardust and drama. The excitement to work with a movie starlet has her fired up more than usual. On paper, it should’ve been a straightforward gig for Perveen: untangle Rochna’s studio contracts, smooth her move from one studio to the other. But before Perveen could even get her notes in order, Rochna disappears. And then, of course, someone turns up dead at the studio.

I’m only halfway through the book and I’m already getting that “noooo-don’t-end” feeling. I just know I’m going to miss Perveen’s adventures the second I hit the last page. I’ll miss tagging along with her through 1920s Bombay, and this one’s extra fun because it swoops right into the film world. It all feels so real, walking through studio corridors with Perveen, with the glitz and the cigarette smoke catching the light, I can almost hear the cameras rolling.

There’s this bit in the book where she lands at a movie premier party, a private screening of Champa Film’s Queen of Hearts, and for Perveen it’s like stepping onto another planet. None of the usual rules that tie her down work here. People are kissing in stairwells like it’s nobody’s business, some teenage girl just calls her dad by his first name, the vibe is all casual. The air itself feels loose, boozy, kind of intoxicating. It’s easy to make out that all this gets under Perveen’s skin a little. She’s standing there, taking it all in, fascinated but equally intimidated. But as the night unfolds, she has this moment where she thinks, I wish Colin and I had somewhere like this, somewhere we could just disappear to, no rules, no eyes.

Massey gets into the details of the party, describing the fits, the decor, the whole mise-en-scène. Yet I keep catching myself wanting more. You see, it’s not too easy for me to picture exactly what Perveen’s hair is doing, how her sari falls, how different Rochna’s look is supposed to be.

So I went digging and fell straight down a research spiral into Filmindia, Baburao Patel’s big film journal from the 1930s, poked around to see what I could find. I ended up creating this mood board that pairs perfectly with my reading. Things like what the ladies would’ve been wearing, the sets, the whole glittery, smoky glamour of it all.

Renuka Devi in Bhabi, a Bombay Talkies picture,1939. In my head, Perveen looks a lot like Renuka Devi. There’s something about her smile, and the way her eyes are lit up, still girlish, but a little flicker of maturity behind it. That’s so Perveen to me.

Snehprabha Pradhan and Prabha in Civil Marriage, a Sagar picture, 1939. This still of the ladies just chatting, in what looks like a living room, all chic and put-together, immediately reminded me of this bit in the book, where Perveen visits the Champa studio.

A still from The Secretary, Chaturbhuj Desai, 1938. Perveen hardly ever runs into another woman while she’s working a case, which makes this still from The Secretary less than perfect. But the scene is very much like this bit from the book, the one where Perveen heads to the censor board office to get Champa’s latest film certified.

Gohar Jan in Chandramukhi, Chandulal Shah, 1929. Image source: Pinterest. The second Rochna walked into the scene, Gohar Jan popped into my head.

Renuka Devi and Meera Devi in Bhabi, Bombay Talkies picture. 1939. I love this still of Renuka and Meera, it’s so glittery and glam, exactly how I picture old Hindi cinema in my head. And it’s totally giving the moment Perveen meets Rochna for the first time.

Indurani in Alladin Laila, A.M. Khan, 1941. Image source: Cinemajadoo. Personally, I am not really a fan of those stunt movies, the ones where women are fighting tigers and jumping off speeding trains. But Perveen and Alice are total fangirls for Rochna, who is famous for pulling tough stunts on screen. I’m guessing Massey pulled inspo from real-life firecrackers like Indurani and Nadia.

Husn Bano in Vasant Bengali, Aspi Irani, 1938. Image source: Pinterest. The pose is pure drama, the looks are so captivating and mysterious. The whole image just captures the entire essence of what a starlet must’ve been like back then.

Nargis in the original shelved K.Asif’s Moghal-e-Azam, 1945. When I stumbled on this image of Nargis, it hit me right away, it’s totally like the illustration on the cover of The Star from Calcutta.

This is Nadia, the famous Wadia star, in Lutaru Labia, a thrilling stunt picture, 1937. You can just tell, Nadia feels like a massive inspiration for Rochna’s character.

Still from Baghban, a General Films picture, 1938.

This Filmindia piece from April 1938 reads exactly like something Perveen would be hunting down. I can picture her, flipping pages, looking for anything on her starlet client Rochna, trying to piece together what the press is saying, what’s gossip, what’s real. And that caption under Padma Devi’s photo, “the colour queen is no longer with the Imperial— but where is she going next,” is so gossipy and dramatic. I’m sure Perveen would’ve underlined this twice.

It’s so clear how tactless the press was with women. Baburao Patel’s tone is just ugh! This piece is a perfect example of what film journos thought of Anglo-Indian actresses back then, dripping with misogyny and sexism. It honestly threw me. It reads like he has a personal grudge against these women.

Kokila and Leela Chitnis in Gentleman Daku a Royal Release, 1938.

I love this picture from a 1939 issue of Filmindia. But sadly the caption doesn’t tell who this cool lady is. Instead it throws back at the readers a little quiz: “Guess who she is, Filmindia in one hand and a stick in the other— no prizes offered.”

Sitara and Kumar in Watan, a Sagar picture, 1938.

Still from The Street Singer, a New Theatres picture, 1938.

Rose and Motilal in We Three, Mehbhoob Khan, 1938. Image source: Cinemajadoo

Yeshwant Dave and Husn Banu in Vasant Bengali, Aspi Irani, 1938. Image source: Cinemajadoo

This ad for Maganlal Dresswalla is from 1938. Maganlal Dresswalla is India’s oldest, most prestigious costume supplier and rental house. They’ve been around since 1926 and have dressed everyone, over a century of putting Hindi cinema in costume. From the first Indian talkie Alam Ara in 1931, all the way to Mughal-e-Azam in 1960, and even Lagaan (2001).

Pohoomull’s Silks ad, 1939. In the late 1930s, Pohoomull Brothers had flagship stores right in the heart of Bombay- Colaba and Fort. The Mumbai store was where the British Raj’s elite and wealthy Indian families (like the Mistrys) shopped. The store was the go to place for exquisite silk saris and fabrics, embroidered shawls, high-fashion garments cut for Western tastes, plus luxury handicrafts and jewellery.

Kokila in Repentance, a Tara Films picture, 1938. Outfit reference for the ladies: tasteful, harmonious blending of west and east silhouettes. Peter Pan collared blouse, the pallu pinned with a delicate brooch.

Still from Professor Woman, M.Sc, produced by Ranjit and directed by Mr. Manibhai Vyas, 1938. If I struggle picturing the women in the book, the men are impossible. I just can’t conjure what their fits were like back then, especially the police guys. And Perveen runs into them all the time throughout the series.

Surendra and Bibbo in Dynamite, C.M. Luhar, 1938. Image source: Cinemajadoo

Surendra, Maya Bannerjee, and Panday in Dynamite, C.M. Luhar, 1938. Image source: Cinemajadoo

Ratan Bai and Pramilla in Saheli, a Star Picture, 1942.

Sadiq Ali with Surraiya in Jag Biti, a Din Pictures, 1946. Image source: IMDB

Still from Mukti, a New Theatres release. 1937

And then I tripped over this piece by Sabita Devi in the journal.

Let’s get to know Sabita Devi a little before we get into what she wrote. She was born Iris Maude Gasper, a Calcutta girl from a wealthy Jewish/Anglo-Indian family. But when she stepped into films, back in what people now call the “pioneering” days of Indian cinema, she ditched her flowery name and became Sabita Devi, which means sunshine in Sanskrit. It was a common thing back then, lots of Anglo-Indian stars took Indian names so audiences could feel closer to them. And for Iris it totally worked. Sabita Devi shot right to the top. She became one of the highest paid actresses in India, easily in the top three with Sulochana and Gohar.

Sabita went into films for the most straightforward obvious reason: she wanted her own life, an independent one. It paid better than anything else a woman could do back then. Her family wasn’t too thrilled at first, but Sabita Devi looked at cinema as a lucrative opportunity. And she didn’t just take the pay-check and kept quiet about it. She was one of the fiercest voice in defending her profession, arguing that film was a proper, decent career. And yes, even for women from “respectable families.”

In this piece, Sabita Devi talks about her craft, how she steps into a role, what she pulls from. And tucked in there is her famous defence of cinema too. She calls out how people from her industry get simply dismissed as just “show people,” like they are all surface and no depth. But for her the glamour isn’t something in the costumes or the lights. It’s something internal. And she puts it so beautifully, that the real aura is “the sparkle of art, the glitter of soul.”

She lets us in on a secret for making it work on screen: a tactful balance between realism and performance. Sabita describes it like “moon shining on water” or “a nightingale singing to the rose.”

Light of the World

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I, as a rule, do not get into the internet chatter, but lately, there’s been a curious discourse surrounding a necklace that belonged to Nur Jahan. And so, I found myself drawn into an inescapable rabbit hole of pouring over books, watching movies, assembling mood boards, all in pursuit of the enigmatic woman who once influenced three of the Mughal empire’s badshahs from behind the veil of her jewels.

Tonight, I’ll be diving into the many sides of Nur Jahan, what historians say, what’s left of her legacy, and how cinema’s tried to capture her essence.

There’s so much myth and mystery around Nur Jahan’s life, it’s tough to separate fact from fiction. And cinema’s definitely played a part in adding to the legend, like her intense relationship with Jahangir and her fight for power after he died. So, before we tumble into the films, I want to untangle the lore surrounding Nur Jahan.

I found the Wikipedia entry on her surprisingly concise and well-written, and so to dig deeper I got my hands on Ellison Banks Findly’s 400-page book, simply titled Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India.

Nur Jahan wasn’t always “Nur Jahan.” This luminous title, which means “Light of the World,” was given to her by Jahangir when they got married. For her parents and family she was Mehru-un-Nisa, “the sun of women.” She got her name because her arrival was a turning point, things started looking up for her family.

She was born on a hot summer day, 31 May 1577, in Kandahar, while they were on the move from Tehran to India. Two prominent legends swirl around her birth, stories that, according to Findly, grew out of the myth-making that surrounded Nur Jahan as she rose to become Jahangir’s dominant queen. As her influence spread, people started digging into her mysterious childhood and youth, to justify her growing power.

There’s a story that goes like this: One day a gang of bandits swooped down on her parents’ caravan and took everything. In the chaos, the parents decide to leave baby Mehru behind. Luckily, the caravan’s leader stumbles upon her and is so charmed by her that he takes her in. And in a crazy coincidence, while searching for a woman to nurse the baby, he hands baby Mehru to her very own mother!

The other legend is as dark as the first. Her parents are having a nightmare journey, trudging along this endless road, exhausted and freaked out by animals lurking in the shadows. In a moment of total desperation, they leave Mehru under a tree, covering her with leaves. They walk away, crying, thinking they’d never see her again. But they couldn’t shake it off, so they rush back and when they get there, they see a black snake wrapped around her! As they approach, it just slides away, leaving baby Mehru safe and sound.

These tales seem to be working towards one thing, highlighting Nur Jahan’s strength of character, that radiant aura of hers, so powerful it could even sway the wild, fierce instinct of a black snake in the wilderness.

Between the wild episode of abandonment and her first marriage, history goes pretty quiet about Nur Jahan’s early life. But it is easy to imagine that growing up as the daughter of a diwan for Akbar had its perks. She probably spent her days in Kabul studying Persian arts and literature, traveling with her family to garden sites, and attending festivities in Agra or Lahore. Now, it’s whispered in the corners of history, though maybe not a solid fact, that during one of these visits, Prince Salim (Jahangir) developed a crush on her. There are a couple of cute anecdotes about this supposed interaction, and they even play out in the films because of their tender quality.

There’s this super cute story, a favourite among filmmakers, in which young Salim hands over his pet pigeons to an equally youthful Mehru for a quick errand, and when he comes back, he finds her with only one. When he enquires about the missing pigeon, she simply says, “it flew away” with an innocent face, and he asks, “how?” Mehru replies by letting the other one go as well. Jahangir is amused by her innocence, and this small, charged moment is something that cinema loves to dramatise on screen.

By 1594 Mehrunnisa was seventeen and married off to a formidable Persian, Ali Quli Khan Istajlu. They had a daughter, Ladli Begum, and were settled in Bengal. Mehrunnisa kept house while Ali Quli was off travelling, doing his duties as an imperial officer. Things turned messy when Jahangir took the throne in 1605. Two years later Ali Quli was accused of plotting a revolt, and when the king’s men showed up to investigate, he refused to answer them, an act that, tragically, cost him his life.

After her husband’s death, Mehrunnisa packed up her life, grabbed her daughter, and headed to Agra. She landed a spot in the imperial harem, serving as a hand-maiden to Jahangir’s Rajput mother, and managed to get by with her skills in painting and embroidery, slowly rebuilding her life.

After living a pretty quiet life for four years, Mehrunnisa’s world turned upside down in the spring of 1611. She ran into Jahangir at a palace bazaar, and just two months later they were married. It was Mehru’s second shot at marriage, but Jahangir’s twentieth (and the last for both of them!). What’s fascinating is how their union played out. As Findly observes, Nur Jahan’s relationship with Jahangir was “exceptionally intimate, its complex structures giving rise to many of the policies and achievements now known singularly to be Nur Jahan’s...”

Reading about this period, I feel like Nur Jahan truly shone in this new chapter of her life, one she carved out for herself, creating a space and role that perhaps never existed before,

Her personal abilities extended well beyond politics and economics into areas of art and architecture, literature and religion, travel and gardening… Nur Jahan was exemplary not because she perfectly fit established ideals for women, but precisely because she stood outside of the traditional Indian prototypes of circumstance, role, and sentiment. Her image did not inherently conform to enduring cultural models but rather came to be seen in the form of a distinct personality, singular in its talents, consuming in its ambitions, and passionate in its tastes.

She moved through history with this incredible presence, really changing what people thought a woman could do. But after Jahangir died, Shah Jahan took over and pushed her out, messed up with her reputation. Even after all the shadows that have chased her name, the legend of Nur Jahan and her hold on Jahangir still casts a spell.

Now’s a good time to see how Indian cinema has tackled Nur Jahan’s story, her magnetic presence brought to life on screen by some of Hindi cinema’s finest actresses of the era, such as, Naseem Banu, Meena Kumari, and Veena.

Meena Kumari as Nur Jahan in Noor Jehan, M.Sadiq, 1967

Noor Jehan totally gets the chaotic, mesmerising drama of Nur Jahan’s life, like a wild fairytale with some really serious consequences. Meena Kumari as Mehrunnisa feels both tender and fierce: she’s the adoring daughter, the dutiful wife to Ali Quli, and then a widow who’s practically demanding justice from the universe itself.

The film starts off with her birth somewhere in the desert and then cleverly jumps between her story and Prince Salim’s (later Jahangir), showing how they first meet, her marriage with Ali Quli, and their eventual reunion, which changes everything. We see her transformation into Nur Jahan. The tale’s a rich, intricate one, with love, loss and fate all coiled up.

The film takes the classic Nur Jahan-Jahangir stories, but tones down the drama and sticks to the facts, making it a gripping watch that’s both engaging and surprisingly revealing. We see Nur Jahan not as a glittering royal icon but as a woman handling the tricky world of powerful men like Akbar and Jahangir. It’s a peek into history with a hint of myth.

Meena Kumari in the movie was basically the same age as Nur Jahan would’ve been, and this totally adds to her performance, making it super believable and kind of hypnotic. She’s not just playing a historical figure, it’s like she’s owning this complex woman and that’s what makes it so compelling.

Noor Jehan is available on Eros Now and Youtube.

Naseem Banu as Nur Jahan in Pukar, Sohrab Modi, 1939

Pukar’s a total standout in Indian cinema, mainly because of its high end production value, every frame’s like a work of art. This movie is a real treasure and I’m glad there’s a decent print floating around on Youtube (sharing the link below). I thought some scenes were shot at Agra Fort, but actually the whole thing was shot at Minerva Studios in Bombay. The sets are super realistic and really convincing. Rusi K Banker, the art director, totally nails the Mughal vibe, there’s a lot of attention to detail.

The narrative of Pukar has a fable like quality. It’s set against the backdrop of this age-old feud between two Rajput families in Agra, think Romeo and Juliet but with a Mughal twist. Kanwar and Mangal are crazy for each other, but their families are like mortal enemies. Her brother finds out about them and it’s chaos after that. Mangal in defending himself ends up killing Kanwar’s brother and badly injuring her father. Scared, he makes a run for it, fearing Jahangir’s fair but pretty unforgiving justice system.

Just like Mangal, Jahangir finds himself in a tough spot when Nur Jahan kills a washerman by accident while hunting. Jahangir’s faced with an impossible decision. He is all about justice, but will he bend the rules for the love of his life?

The plot’s basically built around around these two key events, but it’s the Bell of Justice, or Zanjir-i-Adl, that the film’s all about. Jahangir had this massive 24 meter long gold chain with 60 bells hung at Agra Fort so that people could ring it to get his attention, skipping all the bureaucratic hoops. Different tolls meant different issues, like disputes, thefts, etc. It was like a direct line to Jahangir.

Pukar’s not exactly a true story, more like a drama inspired by the legends about how fair Jahangir was supposed to be.

I’ve placed Pukar after Noor Jehan, even though it came out decades earlier, because they focus on different bits of Mehrunnisa’s life. Noor Jehan’s all about her early days, while Pukar’s more like a glimpse into Jahangir and Nur Jahan’s marriage, what their daily life was like, their chemistry with one another, that sort of thing. It’s interesting, though, neither movie mentions Ladli Begum, Mehru’s daughter with Ali Quli. Maybe they wanted to focus only on the romance bit.

Pukar is available on Youtube.

Veena as Nur Jahan in Taj Mahal, M.Sadiq, 1963

In Taj Mahal Nur Jahan’s a total opposite to how she’s portrayed in the above two films. Here she’s the ultimate villain. The film’s based on this old school, pretty sexist view of her as this manipulative wife and step-mother who’s gone power crazy. The plot is pretty much about how she’s the main obstacle to Prince Khurram (later Shah Jahan) and Arjumand Begum (later Mumtaz Mahal) getting their happily-ever-after, how they overcome all of her evil scheming and murderous games, get married and in the end Shah Jahan build’s the Taj Mahal as a symbol of their love. It’s fair to say that this movie is a dramatic and problematic take on her.

The movie’s a treat, though, especially the music, it sticks with you. And while Veena is totally magnetic and enthralling as this “evil step mom,” she’s not “Nur Jahan” Nur Jahan. Historically, the whole vamp thing is really off because that’s not how it went down. I guess the filmmakers wanted to sell this epic love story but NJ’s reputation paid the price for it. It’s true that Nur Jahan was a political rival to Shah Jahan but the film goes overboard and beyond with the “evil” acts, some of which are simply just made up, and others are exaggerated for drama.

The film’s portrayal of Nur Jahan’s relationship with her niece Arjumand is all wrong, a blatant twisting of historical facts. NJ’s shown as this mean aunt, sweet-talking her brother into letting Arjumand stay with her, just to lock her up and stop her seeing Khurram. But from what I’ve read, they actually got along, and Nur Jahan even helped set up Arju and Khurram’s engagement in 1607, way before she married Jahangir in 1611.

Amongst the many things that the film gets wrong is that it shows Nur Jahan plotting to get Khurram killed by sending him on super risky military missions, but there’s no real evidence for that, the filmmakers simply added this bit to amp up the drama. It seems like they are stuck on Nur Jahan as a vamp, refusing to see her as this smart, powerful ruler who’s also got her own agenda. The film makes out she’s got a personal vendetta against Khurram. But really, Nur Jahan’s playing the politics game, she’s all for Shahryar (her son-in-law) on the throne because he’s easier to work with, whereas Khurram’s too independent and unpredictable.

It’s kind of unfair to reduce Nur Jahan to just scheming and manipulative, when she was actually a total powerhouse. I think this “evil” rep comes from old-school biases, a patriarchal society that couldn’t handle a woman in power, and colonial writers weren’t much help.

Taj Mahal portrays Nur Jahan as this one-dimensional power-mad, insecure woman without ever showing Jahangir’s opium addiction, which is probably why she took the administrational reins. It’s disappointing that the film remains silent on NJ’s strength as an Empress. Under her rule things actually thrived, the economy grew stronger, trade got better, and art, music and architecture were booming. And even though the title of the film is Taj Mahal, the filmmakers missed out on showcasing this one tiny yet essential detail: Nur Jahan had designed this magnificent tomb, Itmad-ud-Daulah, in Agra for her dad, it being the first Mughal structure built entirely of white marble and the design and aesthetics of which eventually inspired the Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal is available on Youtube.

It’s a shame that Nur Jahan’s legacy got so muddled, probably because Shah Jahan worked hard to erase her from history. He destroyed her coins, had her written up as a troublemaker in the court records, called her influence “fitna,” which means chaos. Then he shipped her off to Lahore with a royal pension of two lakh rupees a year, kept her under house arrest away from the action in Agra. In Lahore, she built herself a gorgeous palace to live out her days with her daughter and granddaughter. It had four stunning gardens, all cleverly linked, and so she called it Chahar Chaman, meaning the four gardens. And while she was at it, she also designed a mausoleum for her husband, and a simple tomb for herself, all in Shahdara Bagh.

While Pukar, Noor Jehan and Taj Mahal pick up on different bits of Nur Jahan’s life, and they definitely take some creative liberties, one thing they all get right is the vibe between Nur Jahan and Jahangir. Their bond was rock solid, they totally trusted each other. And Jahangir’s own words in the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri totally back that up. He’s super honest about how much he leaned on her. When he’s talking about tough times, especially with his health, he says she was the only one he could really talk to. He calls her a “sensitive companion” and an “accomplished adviser.”

So his ultimate love letter to her?

The transfixing power of Love

As on my Substack : https://starsfromanothersky.substack.com/p/love-is-a-spirit-a-watchlist

“I have crossed oceans of time to find you.”

This phrase from Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, a line of profound resonance which the Count says to Mina Harker, always lingers in my mind. It’s like this dark, beautiful whisper uttered by a creature of the shadows, ancient and worn by the cruel passages of centuries, his declaration of love seems kind of heartbreaking.

Dracula’s story is like a dark, gorgeous heartbreak fest. A 15th century prince comes home from war to find that his soulmate has jumped to her death after mistaking him to be dead at the battlefield. Shattered, he renounces everything— his faith, his kingdom, even his humanity, embracing an undead existence, driven by this all consuming love. Centuries unfold, and a young lawyer, Jonathan Harker turns up at Dracula's castle to finalise a land deal. The Count sees a photo of Harker's fiancée, Mina, who looks just like his dead beloved. He imprisons Harker and sets off for London to get his lost love back, someone he believed to be lost forever.

What’s wild about this tale is that Count Dracula was willing to put up with centuries of loneliness all for the remote possibility of being reunited with his dead beloved.

This kind of wicked romance, this slow-seductive longing, a spectral lover waiting for their soulmate to come back, the idea of past lives and reincarnation is a big part of Indian storytelling. There are numerous films that have placed this concept right at the heart of the story. Oddly enough, these films rarely get labeled “horror” or “horror-romance” like Dracula does. They are regarded as just straight-up dramas, where this idea of someone being haunted by a centuries-old romance feels not spooky or creepy but something mystical.

The whole “reincarnation-past-lives” movies in Indian cinema has its roots in Bombay Gothic, or Indian Gothic, a cinematic moment that, as scholars have noted, is our own twisted take on the Western Gothic. Vijay Mishra, who’s a Professor at Murdoch University, Australia, digs into this in his book, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. He says that while the Indian Gothic shares the same moody, morbid feels of the Western one, the Indian variant is tuned to a better frequency, it’s like, uniquely Indian. He observes that,

Like its complex literary antecedent- the gothic novel- the Indian gothic draws upon the discourses of melodrama and sentimentality. To these we need to add Indian aesthetic theories of the wonderful, the horrific, and so on, and the very Indian narrative of reincarnation, or rebirth. Through the latter, gothic tales of the uncanny, where the narrative is locked into a compulsion to repeat an earlier moment or revisit an earlier scene, are underpinned by a belief that is theosophical and religious.

Mishra points out that the Indian Gothic genre really came alive with Kamal Amrohi’s 1949 Mahal, it’s like the starting point. Almost a decade later Bimal Roy took the genre to another level with his 1958 haunting monochromatic Madhumati. Both films are obsessed with the Hindu theory of reincarnation, the whole idea that our past lives shape our present. Mishra argues that this is what gives Indian Gothic its edge, this notion that a tragic past life is the fuel for telling these dark, beautiful stories.

Amrohi and Roy tapped into the Gothic form to unpack this whole identity crisis, the messy past business, and it’s no coincidence it happened post 1947: India’s just got independence and we’re still figuring out who we are. But why horror? Why the irrational? Why the dark stuff? To get that, we need to step further into the past, to Rabindranath Tagore’s short stories, who was doing this Gothic thing way before films.

Prasanta Bhattacharyya, who’s like a guru in Gothic Literature, says that Tagore used terror in his stories to kind of flip the script on this whole Western rational thinking, to show there’s more to life than just logic. A classic example of this is Tagore’s The Hungry Stones.

The Hungry Stones, or Kshudhita Pashan, is this eerie haunting story from 1895. It’s about a tax collector who is put up to live in an ancient, haunted 250 year old Mughal palace in a fictional town, Barich. Tagore got the inspiration from the Moti Shahi Mahal in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, where he’d stayed while visiting his brother, Satyendranath Tagore, in 1878. He wrote about how the space sort of creeped him out, but also inspired him, like when you enter an ancient library and you’re engulfed with goosebumps, a thrilling sensation. Haunted by the lonely enormous rooms, Tagore felt like “history was like a skeleton there” and so he “dressed it up and in the museum of my mind, I created a whole image.”

In the story, the protagonist gets totally consumed by the ghostly, sensual vibes from the palace’s past, that he ends up losing his sense of reality. If you’re curious, the story’s free online, here’s the link. Also, fortunately for us, Tapan Sinha and Gulzar made films based on this powerful short story, more on that later.

Bhattacharyya breaks down this story, and it’s wild how horror’s the perfect vehicle to unpack this whole colonised mind thing, like somehow you can’t say it straight but by bringing in some ghosts and madness it suddenly hits different. The unnamed protagonist’s got a Western education, but he’s rooted in Indian culture which gets all tangled up when he arrives at the creepy, abandoned palace. Tagore manages to show how the irrational makes the history and culture seem more real.

The layered consciousness of the colonised mind, western-educated though traditionally moored to its Indian cultural roots, is laid bare on a remote uncanny site of distant history made gothically haunting though culturally relevant through the irrational means of terror, madness and repressed sexuality. …. The iconic building in Tagore’s story now becoming silent though ‘hungry’ points to some significant gaps in historical narration crying for retrieval through a search of the dead conveniently forgotten.

Pinpointing the DNA of the genre, Bhattacharyya basically breaks down the Indian Gothic formula. Like the old forgotten mansion is a staple, but he explains how it’s not just a prop, it’s a symbol of all this buried history, holding secrets, hungry for attention, craving to be remembered, to be brought back to life. It’s pointing to all this history we forgot, or maybe choose to forget.

Tagore could see through the euphoria and emerging success of the struggles of emancipation. In this context, we may once again refer to Punter who suggests that the postcolonial is a haunting- a haunted continuation of the colonial past: “As the great globalising project of modernity, which has its own controlling relationship to the postcolonial, rolls on, one of its more curious current effects is that, perhaps against expectation, we live increasingly in a world of ghosts, spirits, phantoms.”

So, it’s no coincidence Indian Gothic took off when it did. Amrohi and Roy exploring identities through the Gothic framework post independence makes total sense.

In India the 50s and 60s was this heady time of nation building, with mainstream films reflecting that, celebrating the move from village to city, embracing modernity. The Indian Gothic, on the other hand, is like it’s dark cousin. It’s got a gloomy air. It shifts the scene from the city to these misty hill stations or small towns, and dives into the darker side of history, all ambiguous and uncertain, no straightforward narrative. The protagonist in these films are modern and rational, but they’ve got one foot in this “wild” past, where a mysterious ghost is waiting, a symbol of their past life.

Now that we’re acquainted with the tradition of the Indian Gothic let’s get into the love stories that play out in them. They are intense, supernatural and usually born from some dark, violent event. Love transcends death and becomes this metaphysical thing, but leaving the spirit stuck, trapped at the scene of the tragedy, waiting for their soulmate to come back. It’s like, hope and love are on the same level, driving this endless wait.

So for this Valentine’s day, if you like me, like your romance tempered with a tiny amount of tantalising horror, I’ve put together a watchlist that explores this bittersweet overlap: ghosts crushing on living people. It’s a deliciously tortured premise, kind of heartbreaking but also strangely beautiful.

Kshudhita Pashan, Tapan Sinha, 1960

Tapan Sinha’s cinematic adaptation of Tagore’s Hungry Stones is a bewitching tale of eerie attachment. Soumitra Chatterjee plays the unnamed rational tax collector who’s stuck in a remote town which seems like it is in the middle of nowhere. He is put up at a creepy but captivating mansion by his work place. The locals warn him of ghostly presences, but he’s so taken in by the mystique of the Mughal grandeur that he dismisses them all. The thing is, the more nights he spends there, the more his reality gets fuzzy. A ghost of a beautiful dancer haunts him and it turns out that they’ve got this ancient connection, one which is centuries old.

Sinha creates this dreamy, nightmarish landscape. The film is a visually stunning, grainy immersive trip. You feel totally lost, like reality’s slipping away. As the plot unravels, you’re stuck with the tax collector caught in this shadowy world somewhere between the past and the present.

Kshudhita Pashan is available on Youtube and Prime Video.

Yeh Raat Phir Na Aaygi, Brij, 1966

Suraj, played by Biswajeet, becomes utterly captivated by the mysterious Kiran, portrayed with much loveliness by Sharmila Tagore. An artist with a talent for painting, Suraj is engaged to Rita, embodied by the gorgeous Mumtaaz, who’s an archaeologist. Their love life takes a dramatic turn when he encounters Kiran at an excavation site. She’s all elusive, appears out of nowhere, disappears into thin air, leaving Suraj spellbound.

Meanwhile, Rita and her father (Prithiviraj Kapoor) stumble upon a hidden chamber which houses this stunning statue of a dancer, who wildly, bears an uncanny resemblance to Kiran. Suraj’s obsession with Kiran grows, and he loses himself in it, leaving Rita heartbroken. I guess that’s the power of a metaphysical bond. Ultimately, Suraj is faced with an impossible choice, pitting life against death.

The film is a hidden gem, packed with great cast, a haunting grayscale palette, and a lingering soundtrack.

Yeh Raat Phir Na Aaygi is available on Youtube.

Neel Kamal, Ram Maheshwari, 1968

I had included Neel Kamal in my last year’s V Day watchlist as well! Based on Gulshan Nanda’s novel that goes by the same title, the film adaptation is spookily enchanting. Sita develops a habit of sleepwalking when she visits an ancient cave with her friends during a field trip, which grows even crazier after her marriage. She discovers that her sleepwalking is not an ordinary medical malady but something that is tinged with an essence of the uncanny. These midnight wanderings always lead her to a crumbling castle, where she uncovers a tragic episode from a past life. It seems she was once a princess, entwined in a doomed love affair with Chitrasen, the royal sculptor. Her dad, the king, finds their union so revolting that he has Chitrasen buried alive. Now, Chitrasen’s spirit haunts Sita, driven by a longing for reunion.

The film is a technicolor riot, its palette of reds, blues and pinks scream Dario Argentto-esqueness, but with a flair of its own. Also, do note that this film predates Suspiria by nearly a decade.

Neel Kamal is available on Youtube and Prime Video.

Mehbooba, Shakti Samanta, 1976

The name Suraj seems to be a fave for protagonists in reincarnation films because in Mehbooba we again meet a Suraj, this time, Rajesh Khanna essaying the role of a rockstar who’s haunted by visions of a lovely spectral lady. It all starts when he receives an ancient tanpura from his fiancée, Rita. Suddenly, he starts hearing a woman singing a haunting melody, one which only he can hear, and a gift which was meant to bring him joy brings him nothing but puzzlement and sleepless nights.

As the story unfolds, Suraj finds himself stranded at a dak bungalow on a rainy night, where he meets Ratna, the woman who’s been haunting him. He follows her to an old mansion, and the next morning, the guard drops a bombshell— Ratna’s been dead for a thousand years, her spirit still roams the halls, eeks.

A portrait of Ratna sparks a flashback. Suraj recalls his past life as Prakash, a talented singer hopelessly in love with Ratna, a beautiful dancer. Their love story was a doomed one with Prakash being engaged to someone else, and Ratna promised to the royal court. They decide to elope but are killed in their pursuit. In their final moments they promise to find each other again. Now, as visions of his past life flood him, Suraj sets out on a mission to find Ratna and make things right.

This film, like Neel Kamal, is based on yet another Gulshan Nanda novel, Sisakate Saaz. It’s a bit of a slow burn, and Rajesh Khanna as a rockstar takes some time getting used to, but the songs are great, the Rajasthan and Himachal landscapes are stunning, and the whole thing has a certain moody charm that makes this one a worthwhile watch.

Mehbooba is available on Youtube and Prime Video.

Lekin... , Gulzar, 1991

This film’s adaptation of Tagore’s Hungry Stones is pretty immsersive. Just like Tapan Sinha’s version, it’s contemplative and introspective, so you need to slow down and let the atmosphere sink in. Gulzar sets the story in the arid, endless dunes of the desert which creates this amazing sense of timelessness, as if the characters are stuck in some metaphysical limbo, which they actually are. Vinod Khanna portrays Sameer Niyogi, a compelling protagonist who is drawn into this mysterious world by Dimple Kapadia’s Reva. She appears to him with visions of a past life. He tries to unravel the secrets of her past, and the more he learns the more he’s determined to help her find peace. It’s actually a story about listening to someone’s story, the power of bearing witness, of bringing truth to light no matter how painful.

Lekin… is available on Youtube.

Hope you all have a love dovey with a dash of spooky weekend !

A Valentine's Day mood board 💖

as on my substack: https://starsfromanothersky.substack.com/p/scrapbook-bf9

A mood board for Valentine’s Day feels.

As on my substack: https://starsfromanothersky.substack.com/p/scrapbook-9e4

January’s gone in a blur. I can’t believe that it’s the last day of the month already! My attention for the whole month was occupied by work and chores, yet somehow I managed to squeeze in five trips to the cinema. Amongst which I loved immersing myself in Kristen Stewart’s raw and cool debut The Chronology of Water and Satyajit Ray’s beguiling ennui infused road movie Aranyer Din Ratri. A mere thirty days into the “new year” and my cinematic expeditions are already seeming to be more rewarding than the entirety of 2025.

I also watched this 1966 movie Baharen Phir Bhi Ayengi (on my laptop), a film that continues to drift in and out of my thoughts, like a refrain of a song stuck in my head. I’ve been trying to write down my thoughts but the research phase has got me stuck in a pleasant sort of limbo. It’s a film that deserves more than a rushed review, so for now I’ve put it on the back burner where it is slowly simmering away.

For the moment, I’m excited to share a couple of articles that I’ve been hoarding, written by Sushila Rani Patel (sometimes writing as “Hyacinth”) for Filmindia. I wrote a bit about her back in April last year, and in case you’re interested in revisiting that, you can find it here👇🏻

Sushila Rani started out as a secretary at Filmindia, and soon found herself married to its formidable, outspoken editor, Baburao Patel. They made quite a power couple, strong writers who knew their minds.

These pieces by Rani exude a certain allure, her voice charming, her perspective distinctive. She is a woman writing about women, minus the usual condescension of the era. Her profiles on Naseem Banu and Ratan Bai, film sirens of the 1940s, are candid intimate pieces, but still there’s this tone that reflects reverence and admiration. I can’t help but be drawn into the world of these stunning women: Naseem, just 26, and Ratan Bai, a poised 31, both of whom had broken free from the studio system to establish their own production houses. What an inspiring trio!

Here’s Sushila Rani’s piece on Naseem, from the January 1942 issue of Filmindia. I’d not encountered any of her films before, so I poked about a bit, and stumbled upon an intriguing find, she is Saira Banu’s mom, a connection which makes her even more fascinating.

And now, Sushila Rani’s portrait of Ratan Bai, from the January 1943 issue of Filmindia. When I first Googled her I was left a little confused: Google declared her to be born in 1890 whereas according to this article, Ratan Bai’s birthday falls on 12th June 1912. Wikipedia mentions that she is Tanuja and Nutan’s grandmother, that is, Shobhna Samarth’s mother! So I ensued in a spot of digging, untangling the threads. As it turns out, Ratan Bai is often mistaken with Rattan Bai.

The Ratan Bai Sushila Rani writes about was born in 1912, whereas Tanuja’s grandmother, Rattan Bai, was born in 1890. Shobhana Samarth, born 1914, confirms this after all. Filmographies muddled, identities tangled, I’m itching to take some time to sort out the Wikipedia mess that conflated the two Ratan Bais.

Luckily, a profile on Cinemaazi came to my rescue, setting the record straight and corroborating the details in Sushila Rani’s article. Now, at least, we have a sense of her journey into films. Sadly, though, this identity mix-up has left much of her legacy a bit of a blur. I’ve found little about what became of her, apart from Cinemaazi’s snippet that is: she married at 15, had two sons, had a reclusive streak that despite her successes and fame led her to fade “into anonymity by the mid-1940s.”

As on my substack: https://starsfromanothersky.substack.com/p/stars-and-their-furry-friends

I found myself at Mehboob Studios recently, assisting in a photographic assignment at the recording studio, and two things grabbed my attention. First, the place is overrun with cats, they are everywhere padding silently through the dusty corridors. And second, the studio looks like it hasn’t changed in decades. Cobwebs hang from the high ceilings, the linoleum floor is peeling, and the dust’s so thick it seems like the past’s been left untouched, hiding under an invisibility cloak, just waiting to be discovered.

This is a space infused with the essence of Hindi cinema’s golden era, where starlets like Nargis, Sadhana, Nanda, Nimmi and many more have left behind a fragment of their self. And with the passage of time, maybe the dust is no longer mere grime, but something more— stardust.

The studio is like a century old, 84 years to be exact, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the history of the place. It’s seen it all— the making of iconic films like Mother India, Kagaz Ke Phool, Hum Dono, and Guide. Mehboob Khan’s passion for telling women’s stories is still palpable in the air. Though its difficult to imagine what the space looked like back in its heydays, the original fixtures like the robust wooden panelling, the art deco abstract artworks on the walls— are enough to send my mind reeling, conjuring visions of the spectres that might still haunt its shabby yet hallowed hallways.

The minute I got home I was eager to dig deeper into the luminous past of Mehboob. And so while I was browsing eBay, I stumbled upon a page from a 1957 Filmfare. There was a grainy monochrome photo of Nimmi, cuddling a disgruntled feline amidst the Mehboob Studios. The caption informed me that the cat was a “permanent fixture” at the studio, and Nimmi was one of its favoured human companions.

What a fascinating and surprising bit of trivia! I can’t help but wonder whether the cats that now prowl the studio’s dimly lit corners are, in fact, the very descendants of these pampered companions of yesteryear’s stars, sort of like they are heirs to a legacy of star-studded affection, an affection which they are eager to bestow on me!

So while I started with the intention to dig into the history of Mehboob, this captivating photograph of Nimmi totally sidetracked me and set me on a completely different path. I found myself devoting a whole week trying to unearth photographs and stories about these Golden Era glamour girls and their love for some non-human company. Turns out, most of them were huge animal lovers, especially— Tanuja, Nalini Jaywant and Suchitra Sen.

Cuckoo Moray’s the one who comes to mind first when talking about Hindi cinema stars and their love for pets. A trend setter, Cuckoo carved a niche for herself in Hindi cinema at a time when actresses had their eyes set at being the leading lady, by establishing herself as the go-to performer of cabaret and dance sequences. She was like the secret sauce that made the films of Nargis and Madhubala complete. Being a bankable performer allowed her to live it up and afford a grand lifestyle which included a swanky bungalow in Khar with three luxury cars — one reserved for her personal use, another for her family and friends and a third designated specifically for the transportation of her beloved canine companions.

I’m not sure if Nigar Sultan had a cat of her own, but in her 1950 film Magroor, Sultan plays the impulsive Chandani who is impossibly attached to her beloved cat, Mini. Chandani indulges every whim of Mini which involves wild drives together exploring the city and the rustic countryside. I think the image might be from the movie, but I couldn’t track it down to confirm. I did find a great blog, memsaabstory, which has a detailed synopsis though. Mini is not just Chandani’s feline companion, she is also a trusted messenger who helps Chandni in her clandestine correspondence with her beau, Manohar. The movie also has Meena Kumari playing the role of a humble typist employed by an “Agricultural Implements” company, which makes me even more eager to track down this movie.

This adorable still, capturing Nargis in an affectionate cuddle with a tiny pooch is from Mehboob Khan’s 1949 love triangle Andaz. What’s interesting is that this dog, whom Nargis showers upon with an assortment of indecipherable names, is in fact her own beloved pet, rather than a mere cast member. No wonder the cute little creature trails around her with an air of devoted affection and loyalty throughout the initial first half of the film.

I chanced upon a somewhat tattered photocopy of this out of print book, Star Portrait- Intimate Life Stories of Famous Film Stars by Harish S. Booch and Karing Doyle, and stumbled upon this very “xeroxed” grainy image of Geeta Bali by total luck! The book reads like an annual magazine, you know the ones we got at the end of each school year, just this one is all about the crème de la crème of the Hindi silver screen. Amidst the various profiles of the glitzy celebs, sits neatly nestled this effortless portrait of Geeta Bali posing with her faithful Alsatian, Peggy. In the accompanying interview, Geeta declares that Peggy is an important part of the family, and she is not just Peggy— she’s “Peggy Bali.” She also divulges that Peggy is no ordinary Alsatian, her dad is Jackie, a favourite of Ashok Kumar’s.

Another canine of note, who was a bit of a local celebrity in Bandra’s film community, was Willy, the cherished family pet of Nanda. According to a 1962 Filmfare article, he had a tough-guy image with his black coat and wasn’t afraid to guard the front door even if it meant being a bit awkward for visitors! Nanda would have to gently shoo him away, apologising to guests as she did. Sadly I couldn’t find any photographs of Nanda with Willy or her other dogs, which is pretty surprising as it was quite in vogue back then for these screen icons to pose with their pets for magazines.

There were certain starlets who always had their canine companion by their side when the shutterbugs went off — Tanuja, Nutan, Nalini Jayawant, Sadhana— they were total dog moms! I mean, Pinterest has a good stash of these ladies surrounded by their furry babies. It’s like they couldn’t bear to be apart from their dogs and its fair to imagine that if by any chance you happened to run into them arriving or leaving a studio, or like a cafe or restaurant you would totally find them with their pawsome pet by their side, they were inseparable.

The effervescent and rebellious Nalini Jaywant’s Chembur bungalow was a canine paradise. Greta, Rita and Boobie— the three furballs who held a special place in Jaywant’s heart— filled the house with the sound of their barking and the patter of their paws. As she confided to Filmfare in 1955, her greatest joy was being in their company, in their presence she found a sense of peace and contentment.

She never cared for fame or the social obligations that came with it, she confessed to Booch and Doyle in Star Portrait, preferring a quiet, home-centred existence. Even in her eighties, when she lived alone in the same house, she continued to provide shelter to dogs, this time a pair of strays. They became her constant companions who remained by her side until the very end.

Nalini’s neice, Tanuja, shared a similar fondness for dogs, a trait that was often captured by the film press, with the audacious actress appearing on the covers of film magazines multiple times cradling her latest furry favourite as if the pup is her “dæmon”. The journalist tasked with covering her shoot for Star & Style reports that Tanuja’s household was, in fact, home to a considerable number of dogs, and that it was to their company that she was most drawn. Clearly she preferred their uncomplicated society.

Nutan, unlike her younger sister Tanuja, appears to be more of a “collector” of a canine entourage. There’s this one snap of hers in a Geneva cafe, sipping coffee in a mink coat, and she’s got this adorable lost-looking pup in her lap, the caption informing us that she is posing with her “latest acquisition”. The press loved her for it, of course, and called her a dog-lover. Her son Mohnish Behl recently recalled how their house was basically a dog sanctuary and that at one point the family was responsible for 22 canine dependents! Nutan would look after each one individually, and her favourite was a French teacup poodle named Cupid who she would carry around everywhere.

So while Nutan, Tanuja and Nalini Jayawant had their houses filled to the brim with canine affection, the dazzling star of Bengali cinema, Suchitra Sen, had three residences, all of which were situated in the most plush locales of Calcutta, Bombay and London, serving as a deluxe zoo, an oasis for creatures great and small. These homes, as a 1994 Filmfare mentions, were bustling havens, home not only to the cream of society but also to a diverse assortment of animals— dogs, goats, peacocks, a monkey and even the occasional baby leopard.

Digging into these women’s lives, it’s sort of amazing how I found all this stuff about their pets. I also found tons of photographs of other starlets with their pet pals, but that’s it, just photos minus any stories. I’m sure people who knew them would know all about their adventures, but sadly, my access is limited. Like Sadhana would be photographed a lot with her dog, the amusingly named Susu, but I couldn’t find any interviews where she talks about him.

Still, the photographs are evidence enough, on their own they possess a certain allure, and I feel they speak for themselves!

This photo of Shakila in her cat-eye sunglasses while cradling a pair of kittens, their necks adorned with gingham bows, is pure old cinema glam ✨

These photographs are like a peek into the “perfect” lives of these women, their glamour and allure humbled by these scenes of adorable domesticity. It’s like they are trying to show us that they are not just creatures of the silver screen, that they too desired the simple pleasures of a cozy, if luxurious, home life, complete with a devoted pet. I feel like it was only in the company of their pawwy partners that they could momentarily suspend their “star” personas, and just be. And these photographs are just a tiny glimpse into the secret lives of these enigmatic women.

Groovy tracks for ringing in the new year 🎷

As the year winds down, I can’t help but feel the urge to slow down. Mornings are starting with a doom scroll through Pinterest while my inbox clogs with unsolicited promotional emails, a pile of untouched books on my night stand lie patiently waiting, and when I plonk down in front of the television an endless watchlist stares back at me. But honestly, I’d rather be a passive thing lounging on my couch, headphones on, letting the music take me wherever. This last week of 2025 is all about indulging in some “chill” time, no pressure, just letting my mind wander and maybe binge-watching a show or two. Time to switch off and let the thoughts drift.

So I’ve put together a soundtrack for bidding goodbye to 2025 and hello to 2026. These tracks transport me straight to the groovy 50s and 60s— imagine a swanky nightclub, Manna Dey and Asha Bhosle jamming together, you can’t help but twist!

As I put my headphones on, I apparate to an era of old school glamour. Very much like Thomasin McKenzie’s Eloise in Last Night in Soho, who finds herself every night traveling back in time to the glittery and dangerous world of 1960s London. In my case, I am propelled into the splendid world of the Golden era of Hindi cinema. I’m sitting in a candle-lit table with a friend, as the femme fatales, Helen and Bela Bose, own the dance floor with their mastery of the Mashed Potato, the Watusi, the Hully Gully, the Jerk, and the Pony.

You can find this playlist on Spotify also

And if, in case, you are not acquainted with the aesthetic of these songs, the dramatic nightclubs where they unfolded or the configurations of the dance steps, I’ve put the playlist on Youtube as well. Have a look, they are such a treat!

That’s all for now! Wishing you all a Happy New Year !

As published on my Substack: https://starsfromanothersky.substack.com/p/scrapbook-ef4 2025 is drawing to a close and it feels like I’m approaching the end of a book. Once I’m done with a book I like to flip back through the pages trying to remember the events that unfolded, the characters that transformed from strangers to people I now know intimately. It’s like I’m trying to bottle up the fleeting essence of the book. And I guess that’s how I feel about looking back on a year. I wish years could be revisited like books on a shelf in a library, where you could waltz in, pick one up, your life divided up neatly in chapters with clear distinctive headlines. But life is fluid, messy, one moment blurring into the next, my brain a bucket of fuzzy memories.

Maybe that’s the beauty of it, remembering somethings and forgetting some, leaving us with just an album art, underneath which lies all the core details- from the mundane moments to the inconsequential dramas.

I’m not a huge fan of making a big deal out of New Year’s Eve, and for most part of my adulthood I’ve been trying to give myself permission to just stay in on the 31st. Peeping around the corridors of internet for some inspiration on how I could make my New Year’s Day a little special, I discovered that until 1752 New Year’s Day was celebrated on the 6th of January and not the 1st.

And then I read Susan Hill’s take on New Years, and it’s like she’s speaking directly to my introverted soul. In her book, Jacob’s Room is full of Books, she recounts her New Year’s Eve and Day in this incredibly honest way,

New Year Non-Weather. Wet. Dank. Grey. Chilly but not winter cold. And people have made me cross. I have never ‘done’ New Year. Time is seamless. Months, days, weeks, years are artificial, manmade things, so what are we celebrating? Personal choice, of course, and I don’t in the least mind retiring to bed at ten p.m. with a good book and hearing the fireworks exploding all round me a couple of hours later. But going out this morning, by the ford — that beautiful, healing spot where the river runs shallow and clear over grey stones and one sees kingfishers— just there, fireworks have been set off on the grassy bank, and all the detritus of cardboard tubes and wooden sticks and burnt-out plastics has been left where it has fallen. Never mind that nobody bothered to pick anything up— they probably didn’t even notice. None of it looks very biodegradable.

For me, New Year’s Eve is all about keeping things simple and low-key. My perfect night involves my favourite snack, a delicious drink, playing a classic board game like Othello or Scrabble or figuring out a new one. While I wait for the clock to strike midnight, so I can send out my wishes and call it a night, I love getting cosy and watching a movie, letting the visuals wash over me as I drift off to sleep. A quiet night in, doing the things I love, is the perfect way for me to ring in the new year.

The Technicolour splendour of a party unfolding on my TV screen is so much more captivating than being in the midst of one. Imagine a massive drawing room lavishly decorated, egg-shaped balloons dripping from the ceiling, trickling festoons draped across the room, the guests dressed in pastel hues, hand-made paper hats perched on their laughing heads, having a ball. You know, the kind of parties we see in old movies starring Asha Parekh, Sadhana, Sharmila Tagore, and Mala Sinha.

So, I thought it would be a nice idea to share a little mood board that I’ve been putting together, something to get me in the mood for the end-of-year festivities. It’s my way of daydreaming about a perfect night, complete with old school party snacks, creamy cake, syrupy gulab jamuns, crunchy samosas and Coca-Cola, all spread out on a table, waiting to be devoured. Just like in a Nasir Hussain movie from the 1960s.

There is an unalloyed adorableness about these images, a snapshot from a time when things were simpler. The decorations, the clothes, the smiles— heart warming like you’re nestling a warm goblet of mulled wine, a shawl draped around your shoulders, Christmas carols playing in the background. I’d love to recreate these with the balloons and cut-out 2D stars, like the 1960 New Year issue of Filmfare with Waheeda Rehman on the cover, or ring in the New Year like Suraiya with a bell bearing the new year’s initials.

But maybe, I’m guilty of being a romantic, looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses, indulgently fantasising about everything being better back then. The grainy quality of the photographs, the tactility of the handmade props draw me to this world. I guess, living in a world where everything is so manufactured and plastic what I crave is a little bit of old-world magic 🎉

But before getting lost in the images, let’s set the vibe with a song from the movie Do Jasoos, it’s exactly the kind of party I’d love to be invited to this New Year’s Eve!

And now this little mood board of mine ✨

As published on my Substack

Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote about the totally mesmerising stuff of tea rituals in her 1862 super dramatic novel Lady Audley’s Secret :

“She looked very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering silver. Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. The most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance. The floating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing herbs, whose secrets are known to her alone, envelop her in a cloud of scented vapour, through which she seems a social fairy, weaving potent spells with Gunpowder and Bohea. At the tea table she reigns omnipotent, unapproachable. What do men know of the mysterious beverage? Read how poor Hazlitt made his tea, and shudder at the dreadful barbarism. How clumsily the wretched creatures attempt to assist the witch president of the tea-tray; how hopelessly they hold the kettle, how continually they imperil the frail cups and saucers, or the taper hands of the priestess. To do away with the tea-table is to rob woman of her legitimate empire. To send a couple of hulking men about amongst your visitors, distributing a mixture made in the house-keeper’s room, is to reduce the most social and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations.”

“The starry diamond upon her white fingers flashed hither and thither amongst the tea-things, and she bent her pretty head over the marvellous Indian tea-caddy of sandal-wood and silver with as much earnestness as if life held no higher purpose than the infusion of Bohea.”

-Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, (242-243)

I’ve totally fallen for the whole tea-making vibe- it’s got this beauty and mystery thing going on, like brewing something in Snape’s potions class. Every time I mosey into the kitchen to whip up some chai for myself- the steam swirling around, the quaint jars of tea leaves and chai masala all around- it’s like Braddon’s voice is whispering in my ear like some thrilling ghostly podcast.

Tea time’s my favourite time of the day- like a super important 15 minute break where you can just hit pause on life. Whenever I have people over, or like I am visiting someone, chai is so so central to it- and everyone’s always like “milk? little bit of milk? lots of milk? sugar? no sugar?”- asking how you want your tea, and honouring your tea wishes. I like mine with just a tiny bit of milk and bakery cookies on the side. Chai time is special because it’s like this ritual- unlike other meals, I like that it’s the same every day. I don’t need variety or anything- maybe that’s where the comfort’s at.

In Mrinal Sen’s Antareen (1993), this writer dude who’s an insomniac is like living off tea, he’s all about focusing on his writing. During the pandemic I was kind of thinking maybe I could survive on tea too. And I guess that’s what I love about chai time- even when everything else is super messy, tea’s like this one constant thing you can count on.

Here are some screen grabs of tea time in films that were hanging out in a random folder on my desktop till now 🫖