Columns

Anil Dharker is a Mumbai-based writer and columnist.

At various stages in his life, Dharker has been an engineer (on the academic staff of the University of Glasgow and as a consultant in a Mumbai architectural firm), a film critic and censor, a promoter of New Cinema (with the National Film Development Corporation) and an editor (successively, of Debonair, Mid-Day and Sunday Mid-Day, The Independent, and The Illustrated Weekly of India).

Dharker has worked in television as producer and anchor as well as head of a news television channel, then poised for takeoff. He was also, briefly, creative director of the Zee Television network. He is still remembered for his long stint as TV critic at The Sunday Observer, where readers, viewers, producers, Doordarshan directors-general and government ministers found his column the one they loved to hate. These were reprinted in an anthology by HarperCollins titled Sorry Not Ready, Television in the Time of PMdarshan.

Dharker has written a coffee-table book on Goa, a biography of industrialist OP Jindal (The Man Who Talked To Machines), and a book on Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi March (The Romance Of Salt). Recently he brought out an anthology, Icons, The Men & Women Who Shaped Today's India.

Dharker lives in Mumbai's Malabar Hill and plays tennis passionately at the Bombay Gymkhana. He has a daughter Ayesha, who is known for her roles in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams (London West End and Broadway) and The Terrorist. She is currently pursuing an acting career in London.