I have to admit I sniggered a bit when I heard that this was an item in India’s recent budget. Having struggled for years to understand environmental policies in India, this topped it all by glueing together religion and a ...Read More
There are two ways to carry the burden of winning. Either you drop the F-word like Melissa Leo or you climb on the back of the chairs in celebratory abandon like Roberto Benigni and proclaim without saying it that life is beautiful. ...Read More
Aanand L Rai's cheeky Tanu Weds Manu begins with the nostalgia evoking voice of Ameen Sayani announcing farmayashi names of the protagonists and the song, 'Bhor aayi gaya andhiyara' from Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Bawarchi. We see a time dappled home in Kanpur that hasn't been painted ...Read More
This poem underscores the lives led by many a woman in India. Many traditions believe that cats lead nine lives. And the title is an analogy to the fact that cats survive life threatening situations in a very natural manner. ...Read More
Artist CF John is not given to flourishes. He does not need them because in his work, you see the distillation of all of life. Not its impulses. Raw gashes. Or its over stated drama. What you see is balance. ...Read More
What a nice day, no, it’s a super one!
Can’t believe my luck, what’s going on?
I feel so happy, can’t stop smiling!
I feel so good, it’s simply nauseating.
I am not hurting, I have no need,
Of a shoulder to cry on, ears ...Read More
Piece together the pieces of a scattered mind
Make a scented paste of the bump and grind
A play, a performance, a story played out
An emotion whispered with a gentle pout.
The sweat must not smell and the hurt must not ...Read More
Late last evening, I received a call from my son’s Hindi teacher. It was not a good sign. Mothers of 14-year-olds would understand why any call remotely connected to school and the opposite sex sends us all into a nervous ...Read More
A story about the black widow of six dysfunctional husbands could have been filmed like a grisly chapter out of Manohar Kahaniyan or a blood and gore spill in a Ramsay horror film. And yet in Vishal Bhardwaj's Saat Khoon Maaf, you find startling strands ...Read More
Have you ever dreamed of starting something? A relationship, a business, a new world order? It is so easy in these days of American self-help seminars to dismiss this stuff, these puffed-up attempts at “imagineering”, but why not just stop. ...Read More
I met Vivek Mathew years ago at his first photography show and he has progressively delved deeper and deeper in the core of his passion for images, for light and shadows, for the ripple of textures, for the music of silence and ...Read More
I have recently been editing papers about women's empowerment and the plight of the downtrodden Dalit women in the Indian hinterland, and thinking that most Indian women, even in the so-called 'upper strata' in metros don't have it so hot ...Read More
