Luck, Chance, and Cinema
Released 15 years ago, Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance (2009) was a stinging critique of the shabbiness and the showmanship of the Hindi film industry, where one of the industry’s own looked within and held out a mirror for all to see. By Sneha Bengani
Short story by Debi Mukherjee: “Unlike the little girls I see outside temples, draped in their pano bhaju’s stringing garlands of Marigolds, I dare not play with the flowers in our garden. Papa cautions me against the rows of Mogras, Shoe-flowers, Frangipanis and a multitude of others. He says that I must not be lured by a flower’s fragrance.”