Very unusual week at the TOI it was. There was actually a full page on the arts in Bombay Times, of all places. An interview (well, five full questions) with Manjula Padmanabhan, another with Naseeruddin Shah, and we forget what else (put it down to shock) and their utterly pathetic search doesn't help either.
And then on Sunday, Men & Women, that extended Page 3 glossy that Sunday Review had morphed into, had a front page feature on books. In Book, line and stinker, our pal Nina Martyris writes on biography in India: "In a very basic way there seems to be a parallel between the kind of jounalism practised in India and the biographic material published – both allow public figures to keep their private lives private. [...] [Except for] scurrilous film biographies. Unauthorised biographies on popular icons like Madhubala and Meena Kumari, who can't defend themselves because they are dead, are in keeping with the tradition of unsavoury film journalism which inspires them. But far worse are the authorised ones, of film stars, business barons and religious heads, which take sychophancy to depths that haven't been plumbed before."
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