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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The December 16 horror leaves me feeling helpless beyond words. ** I am an average woman, piecing together my life, bringing up two kids, running a family, supporting a busy spouse, trying to craft out a career and busy trying to realize all my hopes and aspirations. Suddenly the news of the death of a […]
When crimes against women increasingly make shocking headlines and figures citing how different crimes against them are rising all the time, one explanation most readily given is that it is a time of transition, or even confusion. India, we hear, is a modernizing, young nation though large sections remain conservative, patriarchal, reluctant to change. And […]
I have never lived in Delhi but every time I pass it on the way to my mother’s town, my skin crawls and not just because of the rape lore that thickens its air. After having lived in the South for the last 18 years, I cannot handle the brazen disrespect in Delhi’s gaze […]
I haven’t watched Homi Adajania’s Cocktail but from what I hear, it achieves something no different from the message sent by goons of the so called Hindu Janajagrana Vedike on Saturday who raided a resort in Padil, and thrashed and slapped girls for partying in “indecent clothes” and consuming, alcohol. Deepika Padukone’s Veronica was not thrashed […]
The country is in the throes of an inexplicable regression. Cover up or get raped is the message that is getting steadily strident and sinister. Stay safe with traditional clothes. Dispense with jeans and shorts if you want to preserve your modesty. Watch what you wear and how! The sneaky, judgemental voices emanate from everywhere. A […]
A girl was hacked in my neighbourhood two evenings ago. This morning, a girl of about the same age who comes to teach my son, walked in with fear all over her face and asked, “Did you see the newspaper, maam? I walk through the same market every evening after my classes. Yesterday, I saw […]
I promised myself that I would never write about Baby Falak or Baby Afreen. To write farewell notes to battered to death babies is such an inadequate response. We feel sorry, revolted, angry, maybe shed a tear or two. Write sentimental or passionate elegies and we go back to our lives and our realities. And […]
In the early 90s, during the last gasps of terrorism in Punjab, terrorists in a desperate bid to penetrate the social fabric passed a diktat that women will only dress in salwar kameez and saffron dupattas. The argument was that jeans and other visible symbols of modernity were against tradition and culture. The fear of […]
Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala is an explosion of colours and cathartic vindication. Everytime I watch it, I remember something I had written a long time back about movies, “Living is not complete without imagining what we can be or should have been. The best kind of movies are the truths we wish we were living. They remind us […]