Dinesh Raheja

Dinesh Raheja (born March 31, 1957) is an Indian author, columnist, TV scriptwriter, film historian. Raheja has been writing on cinema for over 34 years. In his long and prolific career as a writer, he has worked as the Editor of Movie magazine (1988-1999), Channel Editor of India Today's online film section and Editor of Bollywood News Service. Raheja is a committed film historian and has authored five books with Jitendra Kothari: The Hundred Luminaries of Hindi Cinema (1996), Indian Cinema, The Bollywood Saga (2004), Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam: The Original Screenplay (2012), Chaudhvin Ka Chand: The Original Screenplay (2014) and Kaagaz Ke Phool - The Original Screenplay' (2015) For television, Raheja has written the concept for Tony And Deeya Singh's Just Mohabbat and was one of the prominent writers on Ekta Kapoor's Kasamh Se (2006). UTV asked him to write two seasons of the BBC show, Film India (hosted by Victor Banerjee). He has conducted analytical, in-depth interviews with most of the leading lights of the Hindi film industry including Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Sunny Deol, Rekha, Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit, Dimple Kapadia, Salman Khan, Ram Gopal Verma, Mahesh Bhatt, Mukul Anand and Subhash Ghai Raheja simultaneously edited several issues of Postermag and Classic Postcards. These were released by the stars who featured in them (Aamir Khan, Amitabh Bachchan,) Raheja's most famous covers for Movie magazine include his first cover that featured then rising star Aamir Khan alongside contemporaneous box-office queen Sridevi; a body-painted picture of Pooja Bhatt, and the momentous cover when two megastars Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna came together for a photo-session and a joint interview that ran into reams of print. In 1996, after a cover story on The Hundred Luminaries Of Hindi Cinema, he was asked by Padmini Mirchandani of IBH, the publisher of Movie magazine, to shape it into a book. Amitabh Bachchan launched the book in Mumbai, and subsequently Rekha, Anil Kapoor and Sridevi launched it in other places. He is married to Anita whom he met in December 1982. Anita Raheja is a popular food columnist and author of two bestselling books, Simply Sumptuous Sindhi Cooking and High Tea And Kitty Party Recipes. They have a daughter, Nikita Raheja, better known as Nikita Mohanty in the film industry for her work as a costume stylist for films such as English Vinglish, Two States, Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania and Kapoor & Sons.