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In February 19, 2017, at a meeting in Kochi’s Durbar Hall grounds, some of Kerala cinema’s biggest names gathered to protest the abduction and sexual assault of a woman actor. Among those present that day were superstars Mammootty and Dileep Singh, high profile directors --Kammal and Lal and many others.

“There is no God in cinema, Godard is God”- that was how a young member of our South Calcutta Film Club quipped as we were discussing the French films in 1965 after a screening of some films in the French consulate including afilm of one of the founders of French New Wave Jean-Luc Godard. Godard passed away on September 13 in his home in Switzerland at the age of 91 leaving behind a legacy of large number of films beginning with path breaking Breathless in 1960 and ending with The Image To Look in 2018. He was a disruptor in the conventional cinema world of 1960. He invented new idiom of film making and inspired a new generation of thinking film makers in the 1960s and 1970s and later also.

The manner in which the BJP created boisterous situation and its cadres indulged in violence near Nabanna the Bengal Government secretariat on September 13 certainly does not underscore BJP’s effort to stage a comeback, instead it makes explicit that the BJP had contrived a well-designed plan to engineer to wide chaos and violence in the state.

Once Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ makes its way out of Kerala, there should be peace between the Congress and the CPM. In Kerala, other than their committed cadres, the two do not differentiate between voters. The Kerala voter shifts loyalty from one to the other religiously every five years. It appears, however, that Rahul’s yatra would like this covenant broken come 2024, and the left parties have sensed this threat.

Indonesia’s geopolitical plate is piling up as the archipelago state prepares to host the Group of 20 (G20) summit and associated gatherings in November, including the Religion 20 (R20), a high-level meeting of religious leaders, the first under the G20’s auspices.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Is Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo’ yatra losing focus during its Kerala leg? The answer to that question, unfortunately, has to be in the affirmative.

The next time you go out to have your favourite masala dosa in Bengaluru, check out with the local panchang whether the time is propitious for it. At least this is what Bengaluru South’s BJP MP Tejasvi Surya realised. Along with the youthful saffron MP, the masala dosa has been caught in a political storm, just as some cyclonic developments up north brought heavy rainfall that had parts of India’s famed Silicon Valley flooded without notice.

India may become the third biggest economic power in the world by 2030. It has recently become the 5th biggest by replacing the United Kingdom, and is on the track to push Germany and Japan behind to become the 3rd only after the United States and China. However, such an economic growth model is helping the rich grow and keeping the people down by denying even jobs resulting in rate of joblessness to climb to 8.3 per cent. Thus, India is actually heading towards earning the double distinction for the country by 2030 as the third biggest economy with the widest economic gap between the rich and the poor.

Bengal BJP's March to Nabanna, the headquarters of Bengal Government on September 13 against 'TMC Corruption’ was a desperate exercise to project Mamata Banerjee as the most corrupt leader in the country, it also implicitly aims to counter ‘pro-separatist’ and anti-minority image and identify itself particularly with the Muslim villagers of rural Bengal. However, though the participation was impressive, the march failed to make additional impact in favour of BJP in the state.

Arvind Kejriwal’s gimmicks! There was the time, early in his political career, January 2014 to be precise, when Kejriwal slept on the side of the road outside the Rail Bhawan in New Delhi, his body at ease on a mattress placed next to his famed blue Wagon-R that he swore will be his vehicle for life come what may. October 2017, the Wagon-R went missing from outside the secretariat and was found in a Ghaziabad side-street. Today, there is no trace of the Wagon-R’s whereabouts.