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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Aruna Shanbaug died this week. Officially. She now merits tributes and a formal farewell though cognitive and full-bodied life, as she knew it, ended in 1973. How can anyone make sense of how the light in her was snuffed out with a dog chain during a rape so ghastly that it rendered her comatose for […]
It all started with the outlet tube of the washing machine snapping open at the joint, a couple of weeks back. The existing tape had to be removed, the outlet pipes fitted together again properly and taped up securely with insulation tape. Once I was done repairing the pipe, casual conversation led to me […]
Writer’s note: I have been writing on the negative mind-set against Aishwarya Rai for years. Years ago, when she was targetted for choosing a man younger than her, a story I wrote for a newspaper invited negative backlash. Some of my pieces on her have appeared on this website where I have tried to […]
The joke is always on her. The middle-aged bua who cannot get married because she is not eligible any more for love and so must be laughed at. The spirited young woman played by a man in drag who must be insulted because ‘she’ is fat and must be compared to a bull-dozer and assorted […]
Dear Mr Godman ji First things first. You are neither a God. Nor a man. And if you are..the latter..I mean then do you have a daughter, a sister, a woman in your life who you care for, worry for? Do you remember your mother’s face from the time when you were a young boy? […]
He sat there. He sat there like an unruly child who is punished by a strict teacher to face the wall. All this while, Arnab Goswami hectored as only he can. It’s an image that continues to haunt me, a couple of days after a friend mailed me a link along with the triumphant […]
From a helpless young girl being pawed by a pack of hounds in Guwahati, the media focus has shifted now to a sinewy Manipuri woman punching her way to international attention. Some shift. I wonder how the powerful women competing in the Olympics come across to the moral sainiks. Women swimmers, gymnasts, weight lifters, […]