Rinki Roy Bhattacharya & Maithili Rao

Maithili Rao drifted into writing on cinema after a stint as lecturer of English. Hobby turned to passion and she focused on

the representation of women in her decade-long column ‘Images

of Women’ in Eve’s Weekly. Her 2015 book Smita Patil: A Brief

Incandescence (HarperCollins) was translated into Marathi. Her new book Millennial Women in Bollywood: A New Brand? (OUP) is due in 2022. She has written for national and international publications and contributed chapters to many books, including Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema, Stardom in Contemporary Hindi Cinema, The Man Who Spoke in Pictures and Madhumati.

Rinki Roy Bhattacharya was born with cinema in her veins.

Her father, celebrated auteur Bimal Roy, travelled with Rinki to

Oxford for her graduation. But she decided to elope with her father’s assistant, Basu Bhattacharya. Love triumphed and higher studies were cast aside. Entirely self-taught, managing family life while assisting her husband at work, she learnt journalism hands-on. For over five decades she contributed prolifically to the Indian Express, the Times of India, Filmfare, Telegraph, Hindu. Most Indian print media carried her byline on art, cinema and cultural features.

After chasing deadlines for almost fifty years, Rinki branched off

to edit books on her father’s cinema and women’s issues with equal conviction.