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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
He gave magic, mystery, great music to cinema
The year was 1964 and in that one year, I literally swallowed a lot of Hindi films into my heart and soul. Those were cinema times and my brother would make it a point to take us for every new release in Patna town and on Saturdays we would see old films screened in the open for the other ranks. My brother, who headed the family after my father's passing away, was a handsome and a strict disciplinary at times but no restriction did he put on us watching cinema. Those were cinema and radio times and my favourite was of course Dev Anand. Some of my friends had switched their loyalties to Joy Mukherjee, who danced around Asha Parekh with a guitar in his arms singing 'Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon'. Surprisingly, I had no favourite heroine, although my mother was very appreciative of Nutan. But that year I found my role model in Sadhna and guess how and in which film? It was a Raj Khosla film with haunting music and mystery and even before I got to see the film, I would be glued to the radio listening to the promo I still recall like a nursery rhyme. It went thus: 'Andheri raat, sansanati dastan, kabristan ka darwaza apne aap khula aur woh dekhate hi dekhate gum ho gayi. Woh kaun thi?' (A dark night, a scary story, the door of the graveyard opened, and she was lost forever. Who was she?). Well she was to become my role model and I wept before my mother that she give me a fringe cut. Now hair cuts for girls was a no-no in our male-dominated family and my mother was afraid of the response of her haughty Major son. So a story by my mother and bhabhi was made that I burnt my hair while lighting a lamp in my mother's little temple and there was no choice but to give me a fringe cut. This earned me the nickname of Sadhna in my peer group, to my great joy! The Raj Khosla times All this comes to the mind as I have in hand a mint-fresh authorised biography of Raj Khosla by Amborish Roychoudhury with passion and deep research, including long interviews with his friends, colleagues and associates. The book comes from Hatchette when he is all but forgotten, not because of his merit, but owing to the fact that he was not party savvy or publicity conscious. Yet Khosla was always a lover, always a poet with a singing soul and the great urge to be a singer like his ideal Kundan Lal Saigal. He was a great connoisseur of the poet of all poets, Mirza Ghalib. Born and schooled in Punjab he was proficient in Urdu poetry. His dream was to be a playback singer but 'Bambai Meri Jaan' had other things in store for him. Dev Anand, in his early days of struggle, became a friend of Khosla in the Bombay Coffee House and later referred him to Guru Dutt when the Navketan cinema took root. Dev Anand always referred to him as a friend of the Coffee House days. The story of the Anand-Dutt camaraderie is well known. The two loved in the same building while they were trying to find a foothold in the Bombay Island as they called it. Once the press wala exchanged their shirts by mistake. So the two faced each other in the lobby in the exchanged shirts. They became such good friends that when they got a chance they would work together and the words came true. The book recounts that when Khosla was trying hard to get a break as a singer, Dev Anand told him, 'My friend Guru Dutt is directing my next film. Why don't you become his assistant. Come on Raj, we'll work together,soon you will be able to sing too.' The singing never came but much else came and Khosla was to become a great director with his films having some of great songs which are sung till date. If he reinvented Sadhna as a ghost singing 'Naina barsein rim-jhim', he also gave the feisty Mumtaz alluring song 'Bindia chamkegi' to lure Rajesh Khanna in one of the great breaks for the star. Biographer Choudhury writes; 'When I told my friends that I was writing a book on Raj Khosla, only the hardened film buffs among them showed any comprehension. Later, when I posted a collage from his films, my inbox was overflowing with messages of the following nature, 'Wow! All these songs are from his films? 'He needs to be celebrated'. Indeed, he is celebrated in this biography with aplomb and it is a book one find hard to put away. As Mahesh Bhatt remembers The heartwarming prelude to this soulful remembrance has a prelude by Mahesh Bhatt who approached Khosla in 1969 to be his assistant. Witness to his era, Bhatt writes: 'Raj Sahab's story is larger than my memories, larger than my single telling. He was a magician, a creator of light and shadow, a man no biography could fully capture. But I salute the audacity of Amborish who has dared to do that'. Well said. nirudutt@
Los Angeles Times
25-03-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Struggling through menopause? Look for these red flags at the doctor's office
Tamsen Fadal had been a news anchor at WPIX for over a decade when one night in 2019, she was unable to pronounce basic words on the teleprompter. During a commercial break, heart racing and brain foggy, Fadal went to lie down on the women's bathroom floor and didn't return to the anchor desk. It was the first time in her 25-year news career that she'd left a news broadcast unfinished. Fadal consulted doctor after doctor to explain her symptoms of brain fog, nausea and a racing heart. It wasn't until one of them left a note in her patient portal that she received a clear diagnosis: 'In menopause. Any questions?' Shocked by the lack of education she received from healthcare practitioners about such a tumultuous stage of her life, Fadal started researching menopause and educating women online about her findings. Her new book, 'How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better Than Before' (Hatchette), combines the wisdom of neuroscientists, relationship therapists, physicians and other lifestyle mentors to create the ultimate women's manual on menopause. Before her journey with menopause, Fadal never could have predicted the symptoms she experienced. 'I didn't even know perimenopause existed,' she recalls. But finally finding a doctor educated in menopause and willing to talk to her about hormone therapy was a 'game-changer' for her. The Times spoke with Fadal about how women can speak up for themselves at the doctor's office and how menopause can affect a woman's career. (Readers can attend her book signing at Barnes & Noble at the Grove on April 1.) This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. What did your life look like before menopause hit, and how does menopause typically interact with the life circumstances of a woman? During midlife, I was constantly asking myself, 'What now? What am I supposed to do? Where am I going next, and what do I want?' I think those are the four hardest words that anybody can answer: 'What do I want?' Midlife is a time when many of us hit a second chapter or transition period, and we often think we're supposed to know exactly what to do, but we don't. There's no road map for this time of our lives. With kids and aging parents who need and rely on us around this time, something often changes in relationships, and then on top of that comes perimenopause or menopause, and we don't know what to do with all of it. When we have a hormone shift, everything changes. It's not just periods or brain fog or sleep. It's everything. A lot of women start to feel very, very lost. Our communities change, our relationships change, our workplaces change and how we feel about ourselves changes. In your book you argue that the medical system is not designed to treat women in midlife. How would you change it for the better? We've got to do whatever we can to help doctors and those studying to be doctors understand menopause — and in all practices, not just OB/GYN. Menopause training should be part of the main curriculum for all doctors — we're seeing even so many OB/GYNs now who have had to train themselves on menopause. The other part is educating women. Just as we have timelines for things like mammograms and colonoscopies, I would love to see timelines for menopause training where at age 35, we start explaining symptoms to women. Often menopause is diagnosed by symptoms, not bloodwork, so women need to be able to spot those symptoms early. Women were not part of health studies until the mid-'90s, and there's still not a lot of money that goes toward medical research on women in the midlife period. For that reason, my team and I are constantly advocating for more funding so we can get more research done and have more answers. We still focus on medical studies conducted 20-plus years ago, and we need newer information. What red flags should women look out for in health practitioners who aren't knowledgeable or comfortable discussing menopause, and what questions should women ask their doctors early? Red flag: Everybody goes through that. If your symptoms aren't that bad, don't worry about it. Red flag: If you're still getting your period, you don't need to even worry about any of the symptoms. You can't do anything until after you're done 365 days of your period. Red flag: Hormone therapy is dangerous. You shouldn't do that. I recently did a panel with two doctors, and both of them said people are calling their front desk asking: 'Is your doctor educated in menopause, and are they comfortable talking about hormone therapy?' which is everything we've been talking about for the last five years. Once you get into the office, you should ask: Your book states that one in five women in the U.S. has left or considered leaving a job due to menopause symptoms. How can menopause affect a woman's career and how would you suggest women broach conversations about menopause in their workplaces? The symptoms of menopause can be debilitating. If you don't sleep at night, you're not operating fully functionally. If you're dealing with brain fog or sweating in your clothes all the time, it can be embarrassing and you can lose confidence. Women should be asking their workplaces: I think there are many ways workplaces can help women that don't have to be so high-level and expensive such that they'd automatically say no. It's important for workplaces to consider these flexibility options because we don't want to lose women at this important time in their careers. At my previous workplace, I went into my HR department and said, 'I'm a 52-year-old woman. I know I'm in menopause, and we need to have some kind of policy to help women. What is part of our policy to help us get some treatment for this, or are we on our own?' I left before this policy was fully implemented, but I know they took me seriously and are still working on making positive changes. It wasn't easy, but workplaces are changing: CVS just became the first U.S. company to receive Menopause Friendly Accreditation from MiDOViA, a company we work with, and it's really exciting to see things like that start to happen. What are some of the most common but not talked about symptoms of menopause and some of the best remedies you preach? Heavy bleeding, hair loss, weight gain, painful sex and low libido are some of the most common symptoms that people don't like to talk about. Not everyone can do hormone therapy, which has really helped me. If my mom were alive today, hormone therapy would not be an option for her because she had breast cancer. In that case, she'd have to look at major lifestyle changes like taking magnesium to improve her sleep, increasing her protein intake and strength training, and decreasing her stress. She'd have to look at trigger foods and drinks for hot flashes, like alcohol and caffeine. I'd want her to take vitamin D supplements and collagen as a routine. Why do you think menopause has been a hush-hush topic in the past, and why is it so important that open conversations about it continue? Talk of menopause has often been so wrapped up in ageism, and I think it made a woman always feel like she was at the end of her best years. We are very clear now that that's not the case. In fact, I think menopause can signal that we're at the beginning of a whole new part of our lives that's really exciting. I call these my bolden years, not my golden years. It's important that people understand how to tame their symptoms of menopause because it means so much for their long-term health. It's not just uncomfortable hot flashes, it's changing our brains, our hearts and our bone health. I encourage younger women to learn about menopause early so they can understand when they're going through perimenopause and not wonder on their own what those symptoms mean. I'm really encouraged by the fact that I have a lot of young women in their mid-30s online in my community who ask great questions. If we don't keep talking about menopause, we're just going to keep this cycle going where women are not important and a priority, and we can't do that any longer. We just can't afford to. Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life. Want to pitch us? Email
