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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Every year when I see the saree, it seems to disintegrate a little bit more – much like a memory of a marriage. Thread by thread, zari flower by zari flower. Ma was always reticent about the story behind her wedding saree . And each year, I take it out once to remind myself what it […]
Did I tell you about the time I flew? No seriously. I was always the quintessential only child – held back from most physical activities because of the degree of preciousness that my parents attached to me. As a result, most activities which children take for granted were completely removed from my life – […]
What does fear smell like? Fear smells like the absence of smell in a hospital. Perhaps induced artificially from swabbing the floors with phenyl and other chemicals. The absence of smell is in almost everything. Isn’t it unnerving and disconcerting when you find that food does not smell like food, people don’t smell like people […]
You know why GOD created a gap between fingers?So that, some day the one who is made for you comes and fills those gaps by holding your hand. I have often come across these lines and every time they would leave me in a cynical contemplation. A cliché, I would remark. I had always regarded […]
It starts with a hum and slowly builds into a wave that washes over your mind, body and soul. A singing bowl really does sing to you. It takes a certain pace, a restrained rhythm all working in sync to make this music. The best way to play it is to surrender. Close your eyes […]
Time has a way with time itself And yet it falters at the close The best of times are untimely… even cursed And the worst of times are best at worst Where does that leave a plan or a scheme Where does a wish get fulfilled Once upon a time Comes but once in a […]
All I see is red. Urgent and arresting red. The blinking lights on the road red. Her hair in the wind red. Molten rage and dry wine red. Wrinkled sheets and horror-filled dreams red. Bonfire embers and crossed out ledgers Demanding a pound of flesh. A rose in a book to remember, A shirt […]
There are times when we look at the world and feel despair. Events over the months of 2016 and part way across the threshold of 2017, have given us justifiable cause for such malaise. Trump will be president within days. The Syrians are either forgotten or vilified, Britain is leaving the EU, the weather has […]
But you can always look up At your corner of sky Through glass Between grills Framed by concrete And touch infinity This kept me alive In back rooms And corner offices A single stream of sunshine A streak of rain trailing down a pane The smallest whisper Of eternity You can even see stars Gathered […]
Penguin India presents The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. The English edition was published simultaneously across the world on 13th September. About the book: In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland […]
I sit and watch As the sun goes down into the purple horizon And the eye-lids grow heavy with the weight of years. I strain my eyes, and see… swarming tiny hands From another time-zone Tapping on the window-pane, With umpteen questions Lurking on the finger-tips Seeking to take Stock of my life… What I did […]
We always tend to classify our life into well-defined, sharply contoured pigeonholes: childhood – youth – middle age – old age.On a more practical and functional level, we divide this linear time into segments of education, professional life, marriage, parenthood, retirement and more. But what after that? All through our life, we move on with […]