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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The Oscars this year was unexpected. There was real emotion in the air, not the fake chatter that often mimics the profession the show celebrates. There was Patricia Arquette asking for equal pay, and Meryl Streep shouting Yes! from the front row. There was Inarritu pleading for decent behavior towards immigrants from a country OF […]
Every so often, a movie will come along that works like a magic sequence for its once-forgotten star, and for the unique message it carries. It happened last with Mickey Rourke in ‘The Wrestler’. The same Mickey who made films that went into the archives they were so damn good; ‘A Prayer for the Dying’, […]
What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is there a God? I wouldn’t know. I live for the here and now, by which I don’t mean I plan for the weekend, but that I can only rely on this moment right here. So when I found myself at Edo, (meaning estuary, also […]
Sometimes I think I need to book myself a “Crazy, Table for One”. Everyone has been waxing eloquent about Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s new movie Gravity. The only stunning planetary body you will find there is Sandra’s; she’s worked hard and each golden, toned muscle thanks her for it. I love space movies, from […]
He was like an avenging angel. He answered all our prayers by punishing the guilty and uncaging the deserving. And when he left the world he was happy to go. He had shed his sins, paid his dues and was free. This was Walter White, no longer Breaking Bad. ** The series finale was, in […]
No matter how self-obsessed you are, you would have heard of Doctors Without Borders. Officially known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF, they are, like Marvel’s Avengers, superheroes who tread where devils have no fear of going either. They might even make you think of the Steinbeck story immortalised by Henry Fonda in Grapes of […]
I’ve been a fan of television since the 70s, when bits and pieces of shows first started trickling out as though they were tail-ends of meteors and the grand spectacle was yet to come in a kind of reversal of magic. It came alright, and I was snared forever. So when I say Breaking Bad […]
When I was 11-years-old, I was whining to my mummy about how bored I was and then whining some more at her dozen suggestions to solve the problem. At the same age, Tarun George Thomas decided to write a book – which he finished when he was 12. (He’s now all of 14.) Now that’s […]
Captive Prince: Volume Two S.U. Pacat ** I would like to believe that the life-changing books I discover are God’s way of leading me onto the path of forgiveness. Mine towards Him. For screwing me over. But alas, there is, of course, no God. And I have to sublimate my pain over this non-life […]
One chapter from a book sometimes tells you everything you need to know; hell, the first page can usually do that. Into my hot little hands have come three books by Indian writers, and I gave them all the same treatment, opening chapters only, just to get a feel of where they might go. Isn’t […]
I loved The Casual Vacancy. What a decimation of British smalltown culture, with their petty concerns, their sad sex lives and their young and aimless. Rowling says it all ‘authentically’, never mind whose point of view she is working from. I don’t know many writers who can delve into the workings of an obese old […]
She comes to us on a first-name basis. She has to because we are as intimate as lovers. We’ve never met, we’ve not even spoken over the phone. But every shadow that crossed her face was something we recognised and made our own. Her beauty? Unsurpassed. Her vulnerability? Depthless. Her first name? Marilyn. Except, of […]