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As you enter the Hauz Khas Village Market Lane, you will a spot fully loaded bicycle in front of the ‘He Said She Said Cafe’. Clad in a white kurta pyjama and wearing a sweet smile, he serves arguably the best Cholle kulche of Delhi on his mini set-up. It is not just the taste of his traditional cholle kulche dish but also the variety that he has- a mini tandoor, 4 types of breads and the best tamarind chutney ever. The price of the meals is nominal and thus pocket friendly for students and alike.

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Special Chhole Kulche are available on weekends during day hours.

A must have for everyone who visits Hauz Khas Village.

A meal for two: Rs 60-80

Switched at Birth is a television teen/family drama series by ABC Family. Created by Lizzy Weiss, the  one-hour scripted drama revolves around two teenagers who were switched at birth and grew up in very different environments. It is the first mainstream television series to have multiple deaf and hard-of-hearing series regulars and scenes shot entirely in American Sign Language.

The story is intriguing, the script is spectacular and the on-screen display of talented star cast is just awesome. Talking about the storyline, Bay Kennish is an artistic teenager being raised by her stay-at-home mother Kathryn and former professional baseball player father John in the wealthy Kansas City suburb, along with her older brother Toby . After genetic testing that confirms Bay is not biologically related to her parents, the family discovers that the hospital mistakenly switched Bay with another newborn, Daphne Vasquez , a deaf teen who lost her hearing as a result of meningitis, living with her struggling single mother, Regina in the low-income neighborhood of East Riverside .When the two families meet, the girls struggle with their identities as Bay relates to Regina’s artistic abilities and Daphne is drawn to John’s athletic skills and to Kathryn’s cooking abilities. The new living situation forces the girls, along with both families, to understand their differences and embrace their similarities.

The series’ debut was the highest-rated show debut for ABC Family till date. Through some creative writing, brilliant planning and equally brilliant execution, this show has managed to create a unique audience for itself and is a must watch if you like this genre. Currently, the show, which is over 50 episodes old, is in it’s third season and growing stronger with each new episode.

Switched at Birth is known for its emotional episodes and inspiring messages.As a viewer and a fan , one is guaranteed to get all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings while watching this one-of-a-kind TV series, thanks to Bay (Vanessa Marano) and Daphne’s (Katie Leclerc) always-endearing chemistry. Tune out the rest of the world and let this one sink in!

Image courtesy: fanpop.com

It was last year when Grey’s Anatomy was screened on Indian television for the first time. The medical drama was an instant hit, with TV channels showing seasons 1-6 at one shot and then repeating the seasons on popular demand. Soon enough, seasons 7-9 were also featured, leaving fans content.

So what is it about this show that keeps viewers hooked? First of all, the variety of characters on the show is diverse. You have Casanovas, emotionally damaged people, those who’re perpetually unlucky in love and those who’re always upbeat and peppy. Of course the fact that the cast is very attractive helps quite a bit. Then there is all the drama! A lot of it is unbelievable, because let’s face it, how many times does an average doctor find himself or herself in a life threatening situation? Well, in this show, at least once per season. But the tragedy is what draws you in, it makes you appreciate all the happy moments on the show like when Meredith gets to know that she’s pregnant with a baby she refers to as ‘Foetus’.

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Season 9 was a particularly emotional one with deaths, births, marriages and break ups. The new set of surgical interns brought with them fresh energy and romances. Kepner, who used to be an immature and slightly irritating character earlier, has grown tremendously in this season to become a rather likable character! Meredith and Yang were as close as ever, though the tension between Yang and Hunt kept increasing.

The last episode of season 9 was another rollercoaster ride what with Dr Webber being electrocuted, Kepner feeling confused between Avery and Matthews, Callie getting to know about Arizona’s affair and the beginning of a romance between Karev and Jo. There are many unanswered questions as of now and the only thing we fans can do now is to wait for Season 10!

Image courtesy: abc website and aceshowbiz.com

Cost for two: 700 (approx)

Location: Matia Mahal Bazaar, opposite to gate 1 of Jama Masjid

Must tries: Mutton Biriyani, Shami and Shikh Kebabs

After a harrowing rickshaw journey through the lanes of Purani Dilli, in which yours truly turned a believer, we reached gate 1 of Jama Masjid. Before us stood the majesty of the 17th century Friday mosque and at the opposite side Bazaar Matia Mahal, the road to culinary heaven. The lane was home to the best and the second best Mughlai restaurants in the city. While Karim’s is the hyped offering of the lane, Al Jawahar is the other option that is its equal in the business, if not superior.

As with other Old Delhi restaurants, the ambience is nothing to speak of in the very traditional sense of the word. There is no subtle lighting and slow music. While it is not the most hygienic joint in the town, it still is one of the cleanest places to have Mughlai food in the place of its origin. We ordered Shaami Kebabs, Shikh Kebabs, Mutton Achaar Biriyani, Brain Curry and Chicken Jahangiri, of which the last was delivered late because the waiter forgot that we ordered it in the first place. Vegetarians don’t really get a lot to choose from in most of the eateries in the old quarters and our vegetarian friend had to do with Dal Fry and Mutter Pulao.

The first thing that hits you when the food is served is the aroma. The Kebabs were the perfect starters and melted in the mouth the moment you popped them in, leaving behind a faint smoky taste. The Biryani was delectable in ways words can’t describe. Given its name, each bite had a pleasant overtone of the achaar, while the mutton was just perfect, not so soft that it fails to register its texture while not that chewy that you tire yourself out over it. It was our first time with having brain as food and for the ones who have not had it yet, it tastes like eggs. Yes. The curry had a creamy gravy and the brain (yes, it feels weird even writing it) surprisingly delicious. While the chicken felt a little under cooked, the gravy it came suspended in more than made up for it. Finish off your Old Delhi meal with a Meetha Samosa and Rabri Falooda from the sweetmeat shops nearby.

Image Credit: Souvik Das Gupta on Flickr

“This isn’t a story about forgiveness; this is a story of revenge”

I would say the title of a movie could have aptly been named Revenge, but when a T.V show has a name like that, one wonders how many people the protagonist has, to take out her vengeance! It has to be exhaustive and the series can’t stretch infinitely.

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The story is loosely based on Alexandre Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo and revolves around a beguiling young woman Emily Thorne who moves to Hamptons to stay in the much sought after beach house in the neighborhood of the Grayson Global CEO Conrad Grayson and his socialite wife Victoria. But soon we know that the alluring Emily Thorne has a motive entirely different and a past rather dark. She was once known as Amanda Clarke, the daughter of David Clarke who was framed supposedly by the real culprits Graysons for bringing down a commercial airliner by supporting a terrorist organization. The plot thickens when Emily finds out that Graysons were responsible for murdering her father too. So our protagonist and her only accomplice Nolan Ross set out to destroy the lives of everyone even remotely related with her father’s downfall, especially Victoria Grayson, whose treachery had shaken the very roots of her father’s existence.

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For a series like Revenge, the story line can get very predictable and monotonous but the creator Mike Kelley is successful in maintaining the suspense all through. The female protagonist portrays a strong character, one who is devoid of all emotions except hate. She will probably remind you of one of Sidney Sheldon’s creation with both beauty and intelligence as her weapons. The ways she employs in annihilating her victims is ingenious and the best part of all the episodes.

Backing the story line is the exquisite performance of its actors. Emily Van Camp is perfect for the role as she plays the mask of a charming lady with a serpent inside with ease. Victoria is played by Madeleine Stowe who again is flawless and beautiful in delivering her part of a woman who had to fight against her conscience and lose everything she once loved. The character of the unconventionally sexy Nolan Ross who is Emily’s side kick and his friendship and loyalty to Emily is as enticing as his sly and sarcastic dialogues.

“The Great Gatsby” follows Fitzgerald’s classical work portraying Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) as the narrator who leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in the spring of 1922, an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz, drinking-games and sky-rocketing stocks. Chasing his dream to make it big after Yale, Nick lands next door to a mysterious, large-hearted, party-giving millionaire, Jay Gatsby portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, and drives across the bay for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and her good for nothing, blue-blooded husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). It is thus that Nick is drawn into the captivating world of the super rich, their illusions, love and deceit with lead characters being his own cousin, her husband and his dear friend, Gatsby. As Nick bears witness, within and without of the world he inhabits, he pens a tale of impossible love, incorruptible dreams, treachery, power of the rich and holds a mirror to our own modern times and struggles.

The movie takes you through a bumpy ride of overdone glittering parties and grandiose displays of wealth with Jay-Z music and Lana Del Ray backgrounds. You know the 2013 Great Gatsby hasn’t done justice to the 1925 Great Gatsby, when there is an overuse of the dialogue “Old Sport” and Daisy’s unreal helplessness crosses all bounds. The hopelessly optimistic Gatsby after a while begins to disappoint the modern trended generation and leads to a predictive ending.

For what it is worth, I would rate the movie a 3.5 out 5 for Tobey Maguire pulls the movie to its ending. His narration of witty life-lessons makes you walk out with a thought. The Great Gatsby definitely teaches one how to party, but fails to be a testament to the determination of the human spirit, and the reality of the American Dream.

Sahiba Chawdhary
[email protected] 

Film – Go Goa Gone
Starring – Vir Das, Kunal Khemu, Saif Ali Khan, Pooja Gupta, Anand Tiwary
Director – Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK

Go Goa Gone finds three hip young dudes in the throes of a quarter life crisis, facing extreme situations with more derring-do than smarts. Vir Das plays Luv, the typical lovesick, bad-boy trying to go good, but vows to live life on the wild side after getting dumped by his girlfriend, who entails on the vacation of a lifetime to Goa with his pothead and self-proclaimed casanova friend Hardik (Kunal Khemu), and uptight goody-two-shoes, Bunny (Anand Tiwari).

Go Goa Gone’s charming young cast and fresh premise has driven the film to earn positive word of mouth among urban audiences in India and overseas, suggesting lively returns for producer and co-star Saif Ali Khan, who plays the hilariously intimidating desi turned Russian zombie killer, Boris. ‘I keel dead people!’, he snarls.

The directors rely on smart writing and a genre awareness that ensures it isn’t another illogical blood-and-gore thriller. Go Goa Gone is neither a Night of the Living Dead nor a Shaun of the Dead; neither a generic horror film nor an overt parody. It is a fairly conventional slacker comedy. In simpler words, a watered-down Delhi Belly.

The soundtrack of the movie keeps you engaged and makes you want to try to focus, whereas the pretty, post- F.A.L.T.U Pooja Gupta provides you with enough eye-candy to survive through the bad graphics and zombie killing. Post-interval, the film does a zombie on us — it becomes dead, lumbering and tedious. The plot drags on to strangely sober zombies who were obviously chosen as cast from one of the Baga Beach rave parties itself.

The stoner jokes, sexual innuendos and gore keep the audience entertained, and the cast does a mighty fine job of portraying the characters. Overall, Go Goa Gone is a gloriously trippy ride.

100 years of song and dance, technicolour expressions and the classic Bollywoody Maa came to their age. New stamps were released by the government and hordes of desi actors landed up on Cannes’ shores, finally with some half-baked reason of representing the century old Indian film industry to get their 15 seconds of limelight. In all of these, the irony fell on the 100 year old dame of the industry itself. It would have been expected that the industry of million films would churn out at least a few dozen to celebrate the century, but no. Its most visible face internationally, Bollywood, came out with only one and in aapna filmy language, it was hugely thanda.

Divided into four short films directed by four very different directors, Bombay Talkies starts with Karan Johar’s ‘Ajeeb Dastan Hain Yeh’. Gayatri and Dev are a very good looking couple who for some reason don’t have enough sex. Avinash is Gayatri’s young gay colleague who happens to ascertain using his superior gaydar that Dev is gay. No reason is offered as to why he goes out of his way to act all creepy with his office bestie’s husband. Johar leaves a lot of loose ends untied and all of the characters flat. They never get explored enough and given the time constraints Johar had, it is understandable, given the fact that the average runtime of his films is 2 Kumbh Melas and all the episodes of ‘Kyunki Sans Bhi kabhi Bahu Thi’ put together. Talking about acting, while Rani played the bored wife to the T, the parts showing her in her “highflying working woman” avatar felt phoney. Randeep Hooda looked and acted his character well, the silence of his words and intensity of his stare going well with the role he was playing. Saqib Saleem looked as if he was trying too hard to act his part convincingly and was much pleasant in his debut film.Bombay Talkies POSTER_0

Nothing about the film was ‘ajeeb’, if we don’t limit our understanding of the word ‘ajeeb’ to only the very superficial treatment of the theme of homosexuality and female sexuality. Yes, female sexuality because for me, the segment may deal more visibly with the sexuality of the two men in the story but the woman’s sexuality is given ample, if not enough, screen time too. The intentions might have been in the right places and placing this particular segment at the first certainly points to the more progressiveness of the film makers, but it falls flat on the execution. Playing with one stereotype after another, Johar shows an unhappy couple, a sassy gay friend and the very clichéd moment of realisation for the husband. What happened in the west in decades past is only peeping in here now and Bollywood in its 100th year should have shown more maturity.

What would you do if the world was ending? We’re often posed with that question as an inanity used to understand you. It’s asked in slam books, memoirs, interviews but we never really quite treat it as real. To understand the immensity of everything we know vanishing in an instant, we have to enter this world written and directed by Lorene Scafaria.

‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’ is not an ordinary movie. It lives with ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. They’re not just going to die as a race and civilization, but with foreknowledge of the same. Steve Carrell plays an insurance salesman who has lost meaning in selling whole-life insurance policies along with Keira Knightley, a neighbor he meets on the fire escape. It isn’t helping the situation that his wife has left him for another man in the three weeks preceding their extinction. The film deals with several themes in a humane manner which has the capacity to make us wryly laugh and cry at the same time. Loneliness, which doesn’t stop looming on the top of our heads, or the meaning of life, which evades us with an ever-greater certainty. The two set out on a road trip to fulfill their last greatest desires. Meet a loved one, gain the courage to do something they never did, but a road trip is never about the trip but the people you meet on the way. In this case, even the sides of themselves the two encounter in the trip.

They might fall in love. They might just be blatant momentary creature comfort for each other. They might not. The film doesn’t stop or wish to reach a Happily Ever After but explores all that even momentary relationships can hold in meaning for us. In the midst of the riots, the paranoia and the panic, finding something to live for in an irreversible Armageddon – someone perusing our existence, might just find it redeeming. Seeking a friend for the end of the world. Maybe that’s all we’re looking for.

To make a film that is part of a well-loved franchise is always an unenviable task. Most people hate you for trying, and very few are ever satisfied. Sam Mendes single-handedly defeats all those stereotypes with Skyfall.

The first thing that strikes the viewer, as one is walking out of the hall, is the attention paid to character and story, which is completely unlike the large number of Bond movies which have often looked like a string of put-together set pieces to showcase a tuxedoed agent.

The 007 agent is introduced as someone whose best days are all behind him, aging, vulnerable and off his game – something driven home by the Adele opening track. Unlike most Bond movies which focused solely on the agent’s single-handed achievements along with the ‘attraction’ factor added by the concept of a ‘Bond girl’, the movie looks more like an ensemble piece with M as the co-lead in most parts of the narrative, supported ably by Ralph Fiennes and Naomie Harris.

The villain constructed by Javier Bardem, is described by Total Film’s Neil Smith as “is that rarest of creations: a cyber-terrorist who genuinely terrifies.” Nothing is more frightening than a completely unhinged villain, and the film makes full use of the character to depict the changing scenario of villainy and heroism, along with sources of information.

The antidote and the poison to all that is, every thing that can change anything can all be done with a single flick of a keystroke. Or perhaps, just an idea. The twenty-third film which marks fifty years of the Bond franchise does justice to all these landmarks and leaves us with far more than aesthetic fantasies. It leaves us with a narrative of a man who has been in a ruthless profession for too long.