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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Music, images and the written word … while being, inanimate, in themselves … many a time, make up for the absence of the human presence, the heart connect, emotional bonding, conversations, sharing, understanding … and in an inexplicable way, become a best friend, a soul mate, a co-witness, who is so needed … they nurture […]
In the mid 90s, Waheeda Rehman was negotiating a cusp in her life. After spending a few blissful decades in Bengaluru with husband Kanwaljit (with whom she had starred in the 1964 film Shagoon) in a sprawling hacienda called ‘Gharonda,’ raising two children, initiating an organic cereal brand with friend and neighbour Asharfa Sattar, she was […]
“Sirf ehsas hai rooh se mehsoos karo…pyaar ko pyaar hi rehne do koi naam na do.” (It is just a feeling..let the soul revel in it..let love be.. just love..try not to name it) So that in a nutshell is Gulzar for you. A man who does not name the obvious but will articulate what cannot be […]
It has been over one year since Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandez were killed in Mumbai by eve-teasers for trying to protect their girl-friends. Their loved ones are still waiting for justice though finally charges have been framed. However, never before in the history of independent India have the young faced so many challenges as they […]
At a recent event, I was meant to give a talk on “Mumbai and the power of collective conscience”. I went prepared for the speech, but the unimaginable happened.Something that has never happened to me before. The moment my turn came, and I stepped on to the stage to speak, I blanked out and lost complete […]
One of my favourite AK Hangal performances is that of a smiling, chess obsessed patriarch in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi. He has a little room to himself at the entrance of the home that he shares with his son, his daughter-in-law and a teenaged daughter played by Jaya Bhaduri. All the old man lives for is a […]
Note: I met Shernaz Patel in 2007 and it was a moment of personal significance considering, I grew up watching her on TV in the best years of Doordarshan and had read about her, without ever imagining that I would be interviewing her, one day. It was hard to look at Shernaz Patel and not […]
Rajat Kapoor is not made for water-tight definitions. So yes, he acts in films and writes them and directs them too but then there is a theatre and the fact he acts on stage and yes, directs too. The one common thread in all pursuits is the need to tweak, deviate, be new, be alive […]
What The Godfather is to the male of the species, An Affair to Remember is to those who propagate the species. It makes women believe in that crazy little thing called love. Without us identifying with and holding up as ideal this paean to pure emotion, entirely devoid of, thank God, realistic flourishes, you would […]
Sheeba Chadha’s gaze is like a flame cutting through fog. Almost as if everything she has felt and lived has been melted in a furnace and poured into her eyes. She is incredibly vital on screen, on stage, on television and yet there is a restfulness about her. And when she kneels on the stage, looking […]
Ever since I saw Raj Kapoor and Nargis in the song, Pyar Hua Ikraar Hua, my idea of monsoon romance was sealed; a single umbrella with me hanging onto a love that could have very well been my Siamese soul. But that was a long time ago. As time passed by, along with shedding all […]
The poster for Memories in March read – “separated by memories… united by grief”. For little over 100 minutes of this Sanjoy Nag film, we see reflections of life refracted through the memories of Arati (Dipti Naval) who has lost Sid, her only son in a tragic accident, Sahana (Raima Sen) who was in one-sided love with Sid and a male colleague […]