Read this post on the website: Why what’s trending on Twitter in India is largely inconsequential

Now that the mainstream Indian media has discovered the wonders of the Internet, anything that is remotely out of the ordinary online tends to make headlines and triggers studio discussions. One of the most misused words in the mainstream media is of course – hacking. And the other most followed and reported on is Twitter [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: NO TELEGRAM FROM JULY 15 STOP VINTAGE TELEGRAM FORM FROM PRE-INDEPENDENCE INDIA STOP

The last telegram in India can be sent on July 14. From July 15 BSNL which operates the telegram services in India (and not India Post, as The Times of India seems to believe), will discontinue the 160-year-old service. More than the Internet and email, it is the mobile phone that has led to the [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Illustrated Weekly cover: Varadarajan ‘Nayagan’ Mudaliar, the ‘most feared man in Bombay’

The Bombay underworld, is full of stories fit to be made into movies and they have been – lots of them. One of these films unfailingly finds a place in the list of the best movies ever made in India – Maniratnam’s 1987 film Nayagan based on the life of Varda Bhai (Varadarajan Mudaliar) who [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: 206-year-old hand-drawn map of Delhi from 1807

This is my tenth year in the capital of India and many parts of the city has changed beyond recognition in a decade. Ever wondered what Delhi was like two centuries ago? The year is 1807. There is no India Gate or for that matter New Delhi. It has been only a few years that [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Chamko – Fixes all spots

A topical in context of the ongoing IPL spot fixing brouhaha. This is from one of the most fondly remembered scenes from Sai Paranjpye’s very loveable 1981 comedy Chashme Buddoor. Watch in the video embedded below.

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Inside the original Bombay Talkies (photograph from 1942)

The 2013 movie Bombay Talkies couldn’t live up to the standards set by the original Bombay Talkies, the film studio founded by Himanshu Rai in 1934, at the then remote Bombay suburb of Malad. In two decades of its functional existence, Bombay Talkies produced tens of landmark films, the biggest of them was, of course, [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: 100 years of Indian cinema: The big Bollywood poster collage

Phata poster, nikle saikro hero (heroine aur villain bhi) If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed the grey background image on my profile page and the Technicolor version is the cover image of Cutting the Chai’s Facebook page. This collage is made up of 782 Bollywood posters, most of them hand-painted (the [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Bombay Talkies: Only Anurag Kashyap’s Murabba gets the taste right

Wasn’t Bombay Talkies supposed to be a celebration of the 100 years of Indian cinema? Then what was Karan Johar’s Ajeeb Dastaan Hain Yeh doing in there? A mere insertion of a hit number from the yesteryears and a character with a roomful of vintage film music, doesn’t make it a tribute to cinema. Irrespective [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Meet the original Revolver Rani from 1971 – Vijayalalitha

Kangana Ranaut is playing the title role of Revolver Rani in Sai Kabir’s forthcoming film co-produced by Tigmanshu Dhulia and Rahul Mittra. The film also stars Vir Das. But the original Revolver Rani is from over four decades ago. Vijayalalitha with both guns blazing was quite a ‘female James Bond’ in a number of Telugu [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: 100 years of Indian cinema: ‘Raja Harishchandra’ unofficial Google doodle

Google doodled Alam Ara, Google doodled Ray and because Google didn’t doodle the 100th anniversary of the release of the first Indian movie – Raja Harishchandra, Cutting the Chai has. This 100 years of Indian cinema unofficial Google doodle is a mosaic image made up of over 1500 individual frames from DG Phalke’s 1913 movie, [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.