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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Just a few days before December 16, the second anniversary of the Nirbhaya tragedy, actor, producer and activist Dia Mirza was in town. The Uber rape case was on her mind, as were the sexual crimes against young girls in Bengaluru’s schools. She said, “What kind of man rapes a woman… a little girl? This […]
In The Dirty Picture (2011), she played the hero, the heroine, the vamp and the victim who lives the bitter truth, “Zindagi jab mayus hoti hai..tabhi mehsoos hoti hai.” In Kahaani (2012), she was not just a vengeful mother goddess but also Mahabharata’s Krishna and Arjuna and the mainstream hero with a woman’s body. Someone […]
Years ago, in an interaction , Dia Mirza had spoken about how human potential was not always an explosion but a slow release of energy and intention. Even then it was obvious that being a model and the winner of Miss Asia Pacilfic International was incidental for her because she did not seem in any […]
One of my favourite moments in Love BreakUps Zindagi is when a twice divorced Govind (Cyrus Sahukar) sits in his Delhi barsaati with the woman he thinks is the answer to his search for love. There is a pile of home delivery menus between them and he puns on misspelt chicken dishes till she decides […]
A golden haze surrounds Dia Mirza these days. Its the visible, palpable joy of being part of a film she has long waited for. A film she knew she wanted to be a part of even before it was dreamt. Love BreakUps Zindagi is special for her not just because it is her first […]
Years ago, I met Dia Mirza for a routine interview and the phrase that sprang instantly in my mind was, “silk and steel.” The steel is invisible though and only manifests in the resilience she has shown in keeping her soul and her dignity intact in an unforgiving business. What you do get to see is a […]
If someone had told me on the morning of March 1, 2011 when Unboxed Writers was launched that we would be crossing 60,000 hits by mid-June, I would have smiled wistfully. Because, that kind of thing, doesn’t happen, does it? At least, not often and not to people who launch a dream without the luxury […]