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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When the sixties swung into the seventies to the beat of RD Burman’s Spanish guitar and Amitabh Bachchan’s angst, in retrospect, it was the end of the happy endings in Hindi cinema. 20 years into independence, the political reality of India had become far more complex, dark and divisive to allow films to be set on house boats, shikaras, […]
Once upon a time, there lived a man who could sew to perfection. These were times when bales of fabric stared down at you from shop shelves, transforming themselves in your mind’s eye into lovely frocks, smart shirts and swirling skirts, till you saw them in just the form you coveted and called for the […]
On a sultry Gujarat afternoon, the lazy summer heat would waft in, bringing in its warm folds the salted sweetness of his voice. “Paaaaaavvvvbiskeeeeeeeeeeeet!” Always starting low at ‘paa’ and reaching a nice final peak at ‘keet.’ Paav and biscuit is how his vendor call could be broken up as, but for a child those […]
What the remakes of old classic films like Chashme Baddoor miss out on is an ingredient called innocence because you can’t ever recapture what is lost. Or fake the sense of wonder conveyed by Farooque Sheikh and Dipti Naval on their first date as they ordered a Tutti Fruity ice cream in a leafy […]
If only I could… Rewind the track of my life, To go back in childhood, To roll in mud; Hide under beds; To play in the street light; To be dragged home by the ear! ** If only I could… Scramble through The recycle bin of time To rummage for my friends Long […]
Pic: courtesy the author Today, I woke up to grey skies and rain. Incessant, revitalising, cleansing rain. Today is not a day to be with people. It is a day to be spent with the self. It is a day for solitude and silence. To listen to the voice of our soul. To introspect, to […]
Pic by Kunal Karan Kapoor Sometimes, the merest thing can trigger off memories- an image, a sound, the whiff of a perfume. I recently viewed a photograph of Mumbai….endless tall buildings, a grey snaking road and a bird soaring in the sky and there I was transported back to my favourite city. I was suddenly that bird…..free, […]
He rode quietly, feeling the wind on his face, feeling her snuggling up to him, his pillion rider wife. The song he had caught off the radio at a snacks store still auto-played in his head. 11 children, all in their khaki shorts, scratches healing on their rugged knees, scuttling between lanes with bats on […]
It is a girl. She is walking down an uneven path on the barren hillside, placing her feet carefully on the loose stones. Her thin brown fingers are curled around some ferns with white spore smeared undersides that she uses to stamp Christmas tree shapes on her skin. She places a leaf at the back of the hand clasping […]
She stood there, Like an old woman with concave lips Like an old banyan that spreads its arms wider and roots deeper Like that rock by the roadside that weathers but waits for you To take a breather and rest. The ruffling leaves echoing a friend’s laughter The swish in the air bringing the scent […]
Last weekend I packed my bags and prepared myself for a journey through time. I was headed to a city which had acted as the backdrop for one of the liveliest and most exuberant phases of my life. Pune has always been my favourite city, second only to Bhopal which also brings back truckloads of […]
The dreaded day will arrive shortly and I will become 60. How and when did this happen?? “It is only a number,” people say. Well, I used to say it too. But it’s a number with a 6 in it. And I still feel the way I felt when I was 40. Heck, when I […]