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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We are told how to be happy in a million different ways by a million people and the options are boggling. There are many different ways to be happy but just a few simple ones to be unhappy. Here are a few simple tricks to be unhappy and achieve a gloomy, sloppy, sagging soul. Beat yourself […]
My sister and I got busy in the kitchen. She read out the ingredients from mom’s recipe book and I arranged them on the counter. Both of us aren’t too keen about cooking, but we were determined to bake cupcakes to make a birthday special and memorable. As I mixed flour, eggs, chocolate, sugar and […]
It had been just a few days since she got the news of her incurable illness from her physician. It had taken a while for the seriousness of the matter to sink in and finally she had managed to ask, “How much time do I have?” The doctor, after a few moments of deep thought […]
I was recently writing an article about genetics and came across the nature versus nurture theory. I’ve heard of it before but never applied it to my life, until now. You see I have been fighting nature and possibly nurture all my life. My Dad and I have a lot in common. We are both […]
#100happydays… @Pay it forward…10 ways to stay happy…6 steps to a happy life…so on and so forth. Ever wonder why we are trying so hard to be happy? I look at this kid who sees the wheels of a car rotating and starts to clap his hands…I think to myself, “Stupid child, gets excited by […]
The sky was overcast and neither stars nor the moon were visible. A lone jacana trotted across the grass silently, occasionally pausing to watch me pace up and down the paved path. The walkway was lit by one solitary street light and the refreshingly cool evening air was heavy with the fragrance of the harsingar flowers. The sounds were […]
I am envious of happy people. Before you judge, it’s not that I want them to suffer, nor do I wish that troubles afflict their lives.. I am just uncomfortable with happiness, I cannot be completely happy without the thought, ‘What if something goes wrong?’ And I think I can partly put the blame on the superstition which goes, ‘If you experience great […]
Life is shrinking every day. Each day death defeats life and conquers the span life claims it to be hers. This is a movement. Call it living or dying. It is not a war but we may make one of it. By complaining, by cribbing, by pushing too hard against life, by being adamant […]
Sunday evenings at the Sharma household are a rather melancholic affair. Grim images of the harried hustle bustle endemic to Monday mornings and the prospect of spending yet another week confined within office cubicles buried under piles of work flash incessantly, leaving us in a state of utter despair. This time however, we decided to […]
Pic By the author Our lives are not in a constant even flow. There are troughs and crests interspersed with the routine business of living. While the crests are easy to ride- being as they are about intense happiness, success, joy et all, it’s the troughs which get us down and out. Unhappiness, grief, or […]
Corporate offices, if you ask me in some way, are nice. At least they won’t let you feel the weather outside. Sweaty mornings, scorching afternoons, crimson evenings or muggy nights. It all looks the same from your pushback chair and eternally drawn curtains. Whatever the weather outside, you remain cool inside. And whatever be the […]
There are several noises in her head. Years ago, they used to disturb her. The sound of mankind in turmoil. The painful grunts of voices that were never sure. The panting arguments of minds that had heard themselves over and over again too often . Not any more, though. There was no need to justify […]