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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When South-African sporting legend Oscar Pistorius’ trial post the tragic and gruesome murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp turned into a television soap opera, I remember thinking just how ironic is it that the word, ‘icon’ has also the word ‘con’ in it. How truth about guilt does not matter as long as the perception […]
Dear God, how time flies. Kumar Gaurav, of melting , caramel eyes and bee-stung lips and the signature blue jeans and red jacket that he wore along with the coolest vibe we had seen a young hero sport in the 80s, for a while atleast, is in his mid 50s! I watch him sometimes in […]
A sharply sculpted face with cheekbones bouncing off light. Hair, rippling like silk across the screen. Sensuality that was wide-eyed innocence in one instant and overwhelmingly dark and compelling in another. Crystal clear diction. It is hard to describe Parveen Babi in conventional terms. She was pure sunshine in Amar Akbar Anthony. A chatty, infinitely entertaining journalist in Kala Patthar. A poised lady in red in Deewar, […]
Guilt today is a global media event. So when Lance Armstrong finally answered the big question about his integrity in the widely televised interview with a, “I’m not the most believable guy in the world right now,” Oprah Winfrey almost brought back her under-performing OWN network from the brink. Lance could have given a newspaper […]
Pandit Ravi Shankar passed away today. Rajinikanth turned 62. Dilip Kumar turned 90 yesterday. Smita Patil passed away almost 26 years ago on December 13. Births, deaths. Years counted, measured, emptied out. filled up. This whole idea of time and that somehow it should be accounted for in terms of achievements, milestones, awards, body of […]
This post is dedicated to my mother; who like any other teenager was smitten by Rajesh Khanna in the 70s so much so that she wore sarees especially like one of his heroines; Sharmila Tagore (though she totally denies it!). Since his demise, she has been watching news and programs only about him; infact she […]
He raises his eyebrow. Flicks a tear off his sculpted, strikingly beautiful face. Leans forward. Cups his chin. He is not Oprah but we could be wrong. Satyamev Jayate is a well-intentioned show. It has got one thing right. The fact that in a country where we are oblivious to the obvious, a show about […]
I did not want to write about Whitney Houston’s death because like Amy Winehouse, she too has been turned into a cautionary tale about the failure to deal with success, wealth, adulation and fulfilled dreams. When a glistening firefly crashes and burns..it is the done thing to perform an autopsy upon a life story. Oh, […]
A friend watching a film at home with me said something pertinent the other day. There was a time when actors just acted. They were expected to be just actors. They did not hawk their films by dancing at reality shows. The same holds true for writing. Marketing a book was not something authors did. […]
You could hear the clenched fists though you could not see them. There was the face. Battle weary and lined. And the voice. Laboured. Faltering but trying to pull a frayed temper together. Yes, it is tough being Rupert Murdoch in these times. To be in the public eye in any case is a bit like enjoying a warm bath […]
The performing animal left the circus on June 25, 2009 but we continue to anoint his remains, repair the broken halo and embroider a velvet shroud to celebrate him. He, who in his lifetime was first built and then taken apart in a bloody arena for all the world to see. What is it with fame? What is it […]
Robert Allen Zimmerman is still here and still relevant.We still have living amongst us a man, who wrote lyrics like, “I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.” We will never […]