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…
Read More
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…
Read More
“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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
You are browsing archives for
On the day freedom fighters and lifelong friends Ramprasad Bismil and Ashfaq Ullah Khan were hanged, and a few weeks after the death of Shaukat Kaifi, I heard Shabana Azmi on a channel, quoting the famous couplet penned by her father. “आज की रात बहुत गर्म हवा चलती है, आज की रात न फ़ुटपाथ पे […]
“Live Responsibly or Anticipate Death and Destruction” reads the title of an article on the death of model Sonika Chauhan. “We want ‘equal rights’ – we want to be able to go out late at night as men do, bar-hop, drink and relax, have several rounds of drinks. It’s our ‘right’. We too need to […]
“Job Offer” read the subject of an email I had been waiting to receive for over two months. I finally had a job in Bombay- a city I’d wanted to move to for two years. I was ecstatic, and then of course, terrified. You see, I have a special knack for always finding the bad […]
Years ago I watched the The Matrix and it seemed like a fantasy with no element of truth in it. But when I watched it when I was older, it seemed not too far fetched from the reality we wake up to every day. The daily grind. Put your nose to the grindstone and chug away. Work […]
Two years ago, the decision to take up Women’s Studies was one I made after a fair bit of struggle and trepidation, and I’d be lying if I said it’s something I always wanted to study. But life never quite turns out the way one would expect, and now, sitting on a flight home, having […]
The country is suffering, while the elite are engaged in Facebook wars. Nothing is going to change till each of us makes up his or her mind to fight patriarchy, caste, communalism and injustice. The working class continues to exist on a pittance, and the politicians continue to roll in rivers of money. I was […]
A while ago, a friend of mine, doing her Masters in an apparently premier institution, was rather excited because her boyfriend was coming to visit for a weekend- however, the thrill soon dissipated when she realized getting out of hostel for a weekend, that too to meet a boy (!) would be rather difficult. “Why […]
I’m often asked why there is such a long gap between my articles. My response is always the same: that I need something to make me really mad, an experience that agitates me enough to write about it. Usually, it takes a while, but I don’t worry much- I know that sooner or later I […]
What you seek, is seeking you. – Rumi Ever since I started traveling, I have been waiting for this big trip that will change my life and I will come back this whole new person. While every new journey has been a completely unique and exciting adventure, I always find myself coming back and easily […]
I often check my desires. They are often indicative of things I do not want. This desire to leave everything behind stems more from my need to run away from things, people, than from a need to actually be in a new place. That can’t be right, can it? It’s like wanting to marry so […]
I had been waiting for a long time to arrive at that special moment. It usually happens to people when they turn 18, for me I had to wait 27 years for the moment to finally arrive. I can’t deny I was a bit frustrated that it had taken so long, but sometimes you just have […]
When a friend of mine asked me to review Angry Indian Goddesses, I was quite apprehensive. I don’t have what is generally considered “good taste” in films. I’m a little ashamed to admit that my films of choice are cheesy chick flicks that end with confessions of love and kisses in the snow. However, I […]