Word: kashmir
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...Some 433 km of nature-defying tarmac, the Kargil road twists through some of the most barrenly beautiful landscapes in Asia, starting at Srinagar in Kashmir and ending three Himalayan passes later on the edge of the Tibetan plateau at Leh in Ladakh. Halfway along, it brushes the disputed border between India and Pakistan, where a small but savage war was fought in 1999, virtually closing the road to all but the very foolish or the very brave. Since last year's cease-fire, however, one of the great road journeys in the world is again attracting tourists...
...Lakshya (which roughly translates as "aim" or "focus") follows an urban slacker (Hrithik Roshan) who joins the Indian army on a whim and winds up finding heroic purpose fighting Pakistani troops who crossed into Indian-controlled Kashmir in 1999. The tragic context of a conflict that has cost up to 70,000 lives offers ample opportunity for that staple of Bollywood film: copious melodrama. Akhtar isn't so radical as to depart from such essential ingredients of the genre: song and dance, boy meets girl, and plenty of tears are all there. But everything is deftly updated. In the first...
...movie looks different, too. Popp brilliantly captures the starkness of Ladakh, the endless dustbowl valleys and vast plains of worthless desert that form Kashmir's unforgiving battlegrounds. As for the performances, Akhtar asked for, and got, very un-Bollywood and uniformly excellent understatement. Roshan, with his self-deprecating humor and subtle emotional depth, sets a new standard for the industry. "I went round to [Akhtar's] house to talk about the character just before we started shooting," says Roshan. "The meeting lasted maybe two minutes. Farhan said, 'I want you to be you. Nothing more, nothing less.' It's very...
...Rahman pays his musicians on time and refuses to recycle earlier recordings, instead ordering fresh takes?and thereby creating more jobs?with each new score.) His big break came in 1992, when Madras-based director Mani Ratnam wanted a new sound for Roja, a film set in violence-ridden Kashmir. Kumar took the commission with one, unusual condition: he wanted to be credited using the Muslim name Allah Rakha Rahman. When Roja's soundtrack became a runaway success, A.R. Rahman was born...
...Singh is enjoying yet another spell under the spotlight, thanks to his new novel Burial at Sea, a fantasia on an alleged sexual escapade by Nehru. The central character, Jai Bhagwan, "is a takeoff of Nehru," says Singh. Bhagwan, like Nehru, is a Brahman from Kashmir, British-educated, brilliant, agnostic, a follower of Mohandas Gandhi, and with big dreams of modernizing his impoverished country. There's one difference: instead of going into politics, Bhagwan decides to transform India by becoming an industrialist to give his country the economy it deserves. The crux of the novel comes when the middle-aged...