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 Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar missed his vocation in life. He should have been a performer. From what little we can make out from his wooden expression, whenever he appears on television to participate in well orchestrated press conferences, he would have turned out to be a terrible actor. But how does that […]
Dear Stranger, I have never met you. I don’t know your name. I have not even seen any pictures of yours. All I know is that you became a part of my consciousness on a cold December day in a foreign land. When I read about the violence perpetuated on you, my stomach turned […]
He sat there. He sat there like an unruly child who is punished by a strict teacher to face the wall. All this while, Arnab Goswami hectored as only he can. It’s an image that continues to haunt me, a couple of days after a friend mailed me a link along with the triumphant […]
My wife drives. She is way ahead when it comes to this particular skill. Sometimes sitting next to her while she is driving helps me understand what she is up against whenever she gets behind the steering wheel. Most male drivers in the city don’t like women driving. This is regardless of the class they […]
The three of them are the true loves of my life and they don’t figure in any order of preference. Each one of them has played an equally important part in my growth as a writer and a human being. In my own way I have paid a tribute to all three of them […]
The week begins and a poem beckons the overcast clouds deliver the words at the door and now they tumble all over asking to be strung together chiding them does not help call them names, tell them they are worthless, no one publishes poetry any more and if they do, they don’t pay you for […]
The nation is outraged over the Guwahati incident. At least we are meant to believe this, if we are to go by the antics of hysterical TV anchors. And so? What is going to follow now? Outrage is a distraction. It lasts as long as the next one comes along. We will soon have something even […]
Movies are about magical moments that linger on for years afterwards either bringing a smile on an otherwise humdrum day or suffusing you with sorrow when you are taking a walk by a seaside. Here are my 10 favourite moments from 10 favourite films. 1. Hey Jude moment from Coming Home– This is an anti […]
As I am growing older, festivals are not so much about looking forward to something as they are about looking back. Being nostalgic and turning into an uncle who’s always remembering the past. Last month I was invited to inaugurate a Durga Puja. The organizers asked me to speak a few lines. They must have […]
It has been a matter of enduring mystery to all those who need the melody of Hindi film songs to relax and be less uptight as to why the lyricists short change the ballads of love and reserve their best for the pining that follows betrayal and infidelity. Think of most songs used for […]
A decade into the new millennium, the two names at the forefront of Indian writing in English for stage continue to be Girish Karnad and Mahesh Dattani. New and old plays written by these veterans are grabbed by well known stage directors and the audience is almost always fortunate enough to find their latest works […]