Strange Encounters

Drawing its wisdom from Hindu, Judaic and Islamic philosophies, this is the multicultural, multifaceted saga of Parikshat Sahnis journey from being a film student in Soviet Russia to surrendering Stanislavski for Indian cinema. Strange Encounters is a prismatic collection of travel portraits, impressions and life lessons that Parikshat Sahni has accumulated in his itinerant life moving within the golden autumns of Moscow to the tune of Tchaikovsky, returning to Mumbai and his roots, entering Bollywood, and finding fame. Sahni chronicles stories from a life whose pendulum swings wildly from the humorous to the utterly horrifying. He confronts his thanatophobia on film sets and his atheism on an ill-prepared trek to Amarnath; he gives us drinking lessons with screenwriter friends and a profound insight into the state of culture wars in present-day Kashmir; he recalls the thrill of young love in Russia and its attendant treacheries of the heart, as well as a study of Pakistan, a history of India as the land of many, and a look at the current political discourse through the eyes of a refugee.