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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Here’s the next edition of ‘Conditioning is for Hair, not Minds’ in collaboration with The Spoilt Modern Indian Woman. The ad I am taking up is Amazon’s new groundbreaking (not) social experiment, titled “When a Woman Shops”. Check it out here. The ad begins with a group of men, in a generic, posh, urban living room, talking […]
I am taking up yet another commercial rife with regressive clichés about Indian women and their “place”. This one, a part of Mother Dairy’s “Ma Jaisi Koi Nahin” campaign almost made me barf harder than a glass of sour milk. Watch the ad here (and try not to cringe, I dare you). It begins with […]
The ad I’m taking on today is actually one that’s being hailed as progressive and gender inclusive by many on social media. That’s right; I’m talking about BIBA’s new “Change is Beautiful” ad. However, I’m disappointed to report that it’s not as ground breaking and stereotype changing as the makers would have you believe. Here’s […]
Madhuri Dixit recently received a notice from the Haridwar Food and Drug Administration for endorsing the nutritional value of Maggi, after the UP government found dangerously high levels of lead in a batch of noodles. While a debate rages about whether brand ambassadors can be held responsible for the quality of products, there is another side to the […]
I came across this ad / poster when one of my friends posted it on a social networking site. I found it really offensive but thinking beyond the gut reaction, I really did not know what disturbed me more – the ad itself or the fact that people would actually fall for the ad and […]
“Kuch jamaa nahi!” (Translated in English, the phrase loosely refers to something that was supposed to set but did not. Like an idea that did not firm up. Or curd, that stayed runny.) Ask any advertising professional worth his salt, the true meaning of the client reaction stated above and chances are, he/she would be short […]
Sometimes, when I am travelling back home from work, I shut my eyes. In the bus, in the car, in the train. Sometimes, life around me is a bit too overwhelming, even for me. I work in an industry where advertising and selling form the core of my job. Everyday. Everyday, we come up with […]
“Democracy,” began our political-science teacher in her high-pitched nasal voice and her staccato accent, “Is a government of the ‘peeple,’ by the ‘peeple,’ for the ‘peeple.” I remember nothing else. I did mug it all up though, that and the rest of it, for the Board exams. Did pretty well too, come to think of […]
Hi friends, readers, co-creators of Unboxed Writers.. Thanks to you, Unboxed Writers has become a refreshing media entity on the Web. Within two months, we have been hit over 20,000 times from all over the world by readers keen to read honest, incisive and unpretentious writing. We think we are ready to take the site to another level and so […]