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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“Javed bhai, hum Dilli haar gaye hain!” (We have lost Delhi), yells Naseeruddin Shah as a violently bitter sepoy in Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (1978). That scene is hard to forget. As is the fact that it was on the sets of Junoon that Shah first met Ismat Chughtai, one of the bravest literary and […]
Every inch of landscape in a three mile radius around Hollywood screams of glamour, showbiz and drama. Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck beam at us from large posters that hang alongside the winding road . Upscale apartment complexes and palatial estates seem to look down their noses at us as we make our way to […]
Rows and rows of palm trees stand erect like sentinels along the winding roads of Los Angeles. They perhaps shoulder the responsibility of guarding the very wealthy angles (and some devils) who deign to reside here. Rubbing shoulders with them are towering high rises that fall just a few feet short of the doors of […]
Recently I made a new penpal in America. Here’s a copy of the first letter I posted. Dear Holly Wood, I hope you are doing well. I know you have been awfully busy trying to come up with all sorts of movies, and I understood from your last letter that you are feeling extraordinarily stressed […]
Kanchan Chander is known for her versatility. She has consistently, and indeed successfully, shown an impressive diversity in her art practice that ranges from large-scale paintings replete with sensuous and spiritual feminine forms to intricate miniature style mixed media works on both canvas and paper. In her latest solo show at Gallery Art Positive, titled […]
Religion is the saddest of all crutches, more so than Love and Hope. Yet I dare anyone to watch Ben-Hur and not feel a twinge of faith stir in the deepest recesses. By that, of course, I mean an understanding of what Jesus, like Lau Tsu perhaps, stood for. Made in 1959, this film, like […]
What The Godfather is to the male of the species, An Affair to Remember is to those who propagate the species. It makes women believe in that crazy little thing called love. Without us identifying with and holding up as ideal this paean to pure emotion, entirely devoid of, thank God, realistic flourishes, you would […]
A train steaming desolately into the night. Carrying animals and humans, both equally desperate. Packed into cages, visible and invisible. The misery and the pain that creates the illusion of an “extravagant extravaganza” under the milky Big Top. A circus of miraculous animals who may be angry or hungry, clowns and performers who may have nothing to smile about, a shining showstopper leading a horse who may […]