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
Me too. Me too. Me too. No matter how many times I say it, it won’t be anywhere near enough. Strangers on the street, boyfriends, acquaintances at parties, “friendly” uncles, neighbours- the reality that our bodies belong to everyone but ourselves is one that women realize rather early into their lives. The first time I […]
Fear is a friend. She’s been by my side for as long as I can remember. While most friends tend to drift away or come back into my life sooner or later, she’s never wavered. No matter how safe a country, city, street or home is, she’s taught me to regard all men with suspicion, […]
Monica : Careful. Careful. CAREFUL! Chandler : I’ll tell you what, for the rest of our lives, I’ll be careful until told otherwise. Having just moved into a hostel, I’ve been trying to reconcile what is supposed to be a new found freedom with a set of rules and moral codes that I have never had to think […]
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 […]
Actor and media personality Shenaz Treasury has had an eventful week. As a spontaneous reaction to the Uber rape case in Delhi, she posted an open letter on her Facebook page. The letter was addressed to influential thought leaders in India, all of them men incidentally. She shared personal episodes of violation and stated that […]
On November 19, Men’s Day was celebrated across the world and promotional videos by consumer companies tried to remind us of the men we could always count on in our lives.Coincidentally, in the season finale of Satyamev Jayate, various participants debated the meaning of a ‘good man’ and how misunderstood the idea of masculinity was in […]
I have never really understood the concept of writing about rapes and condemning the act, because isn’t it obvious that it is wrong? Why do we need to state the obvious every now and again? And in spite of various magazines, television channels, celebrities, bloggers and ordinary men and women voicing their disgust and shock […]
A lot has been seen and heard about the new anti-domestic violence campaign by the ad agency Taproot India. Their “abused goddesses” ad has been making the rounds in social media websites, social networking sites and has received a lot of coverage in many newspapers and journals in India and around the world. Many newspapers have […]
Just recently, I penned a post about how parents could do their bit against the Rape Culture in raising children to be more sensitive and empathetic. The Chetan Bhagat tweet saga on Twitter was a classic example to the contrary. Mr Bhagat tweeted, “The Rupee is asking, is there no punishment for my rapists ?” […]
And it starts again. Smriti Irani waving soap operatic fingers. Sanjay Raut blaming it all on Bangladeshi immigrants.Ministers reducing rape to rhetoric, screaming at each other in Rajya Sabha. People on the streets waving banners. Mumbai being labelled as a city of Maximum Horror just as Delhi was named the Rape Capital after the Nirbhaya […]
Dear Stranger, I have never met you. I don’t know your name. I have not even seen any pictures of yours. All I know is that you became a part of my consciousness on a cold December day in a foreign land. When I read about the violence perpetuated on you, my stomach turned […]
The rape and murder of the young 23- year- old in New Delhi on December 16, 2012, has unleashed the suppressed angst of millions of men and women in India and has led to endless debates and discussions across all media, which are not going to finish too soon, but will die down nonetheless, over time.Meanwhile, rapes, […]