International Men's Day

Men think they rule the world..maybe they do, in office. But homes are mostly unruled by them, because they are never there, mostly. The race for a promotion, or meeting targets, or just sending money home (for migrant workers) keeps them busy.

It is the women who do the bulk of the work back home even today, which makes it a comfort zone for all who live there - a bit of nagging is a small price to pay for it! This is not to celebrate the unequal partnership, but to express gratefulness for women who do what it takes, in spite of many challenges. Hopefully, one day, men will return the favour in larger numbers.

If men can at least understand the situation, it is half the battle won. Thanks to the women in our lives. It is not one, but several women who are usually behind a successful man.

Southern Contributions to Bollywood

The South has contributed substantially to Bollywood over the years. More heroines than others. Two or three of the most successful have been from the South of India- Waheeda Rehman, Hema Malini and Rekha.

Lots of Southern directors like T. Rama Rao made a series of hit films which resurrected Jeetendra's career along with heroines like Sridevi and Jayaprada- Mawali, Judaai, et al. K. Vishwanath was a talented Telugu director who made Sargam and Kaamchor in Hindi. Bapu directed an offbeat movie called Hum Paanch based on the Mahabharata, made contemporary. LV Prasad made a lot of Hindi films, and so did Nagi Reddy.

S.P. Balasubramaniam has sung a lot of Hindi film songs in the early films of Salman Khan, and also for Kamal Haasan in Ek Duuje Ke Liye. Many recent films of Salman Khan and one of Aamir (Ghajini) were originally Telugu films.

In olden times, many tunes were copied from Telugu or Tamil films into Hindi and vice-versa. The hit song from Kalakar, "Neele neele ambar par chand jab chhaye," is a copy of a Tamil film song "Ilaya nila,.." that I happened to watch during my stay at IIM Bangalore in 1983.