In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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Rows and rows of palm trees stand erect like sentinels along the winding roads of Los Angeles. They perhaps shoulder the responsibility of guarding the very wealthy angles (and some devils) who deign to reside here. Rubbing shoulders with them are towering high rises that fall just a few feet short of the doors of […]
Winter mornings in Bhopal have for years exuded a certain charm and thinking about them always makes me want to pack my woollens and head home. Memories of chilly mornings dawning upon the city and a bright sun fighting valiantly to keep earthlings energetic and happy are as fresh in my mind as just-baked bread. […]
Sunday evenings at the Sharma household are a rather melancholic affair. Grim images of the harried hustle bustle endemic to Monday mornings and the prospect of spending yet another week confined within office cubicles buried under piles of work flash incessantly, leaving us in a state of utter despair. This time however, we decided to […]
Yet another week in Michigan and I find myself staring at an even more dismal sight than what I beheld the last time I was here. The weather app on my phone shows a tiny grey cloud showering drops of water over the city and sure enough, the view outside is a real life, zoomed-in […]
The seeds of my love affair with San Francisco were sown the very day we were acquainted. What started out as a mere check mark on the to-do list of a travel aficionado, culminated into a full blown obsession which grew exponentially with each passing day. This is the story of my bitter sweet […]
There are dozens of places on this planet which stake claim to the coveted appellation ‘Heaven on Earth’. We even have one in the midst of all the so called squalor in India – Kashmir. But this is not a sonnet praising the beauty and serenity of Kashmir; it is a humble offering to […]
Bright yellow mangoes with their fragrance and juicy sweetness occupied most of little Pranay’s thoughts these days. Now, this was not an out of ordinary occurrence given that Pranay and his family were major mango fanatics. Year after year along with the summer heat a certain mango mania descended upon the Sharma household. *** Mummy […]
Summer vacations had finally begun and 15- year- old Mala was glad to be one of the lucky ones in her group of friends who would be escaping the sordid Bhopal heat. Her parents had finally decided to take the long overdue vacation to Bangalore and they were all set to spend a glorious summer […]
Last weekend I travelled to Lucknow….a city famous for its extravagant Nawabs, its cultured populace and its old world charm. Now, contrary to what you may expect, this was not an ordinary vacation with sight seeing as the primary objective. A dear friend’s wedding prompted a bunch of us to converge on this quaint city. […]
Last weekend I packed my bags and prepared myself for a journey through time. I was headed to a city which had acted as the backdrop for one of the liveliest and most exuberant phases of my life. Pune has always been my favourite city, second only to Bhopal which also brings back truckloads of […]
Imagine a city floating on water. Not an island, not a city tormented by floods, just a city which has rivulets instead of streets and boats instead of taxis. A city where buildings are erected on foundations of wood submerged in water. Venice is the capital of the Veneto region in North East Italy and […]
What comes to mind when one hears of a certain region called Tuscany in Central Italy? Some would say brilliant wines like Chianti, others would say famous artists like Botticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci while some probably would also be reminded of the macabre story of the Monster of Florence. For me, Florence-the capital […]