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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I’ve been following the global #MeToo Movement for a few years now, torn between celebrating the outpouring of sisterhood and solidarity for survivors of sexual harassment and appalled at the shame and ridicule they were being subjected to for speaking out. The #MeToo implosion in India followed a scarily similar turn of events, raging through […]
Kabir Singh is not an anomaly. He is just the ultimate culmination of the privilege that male protagonists have enjoyed in Hindi cinema for a long time. Raj Kapoor slapped and manhandled Nargis in Awara (1956) because she playfully called him ‘Junglee.” But he had a messy, heartbreaking backstory so she had to rescue him […]
“… cutting up women is a sport older than cricket but just as popular and equally full of obscure rituals and intricate rules that everyone seems to know…” ~ Mohammed Hanif, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti I’m reading Our Lady of Alice Bhatti as I travel trip my way across India, meeting women for the newest campaign of our NGO- an […]
Right at the onset, let me make it clear that I had a lot of issues with Kankar, the narrative about domestic violence that is about to conclude on Zee Zindagi. All the women in the serial with the exception of Kiran (Sanam Baloch), spend their lives sharpening invisible knives, wishing each other ill, pretending […]
I overheard a conversation at a parlour here a couple of weeks ago that has been on my mind ever since. A woman was getting her hair cut, and the hairdresser suggested that she highlight her hair blonde-to which the woman replied: ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t let me. He likes my hair dark.’ Then, laughingly, she added, […]
It was the beginning of a new academic year. The entire school was back after a break. It was my first year at work after marriage. Many of them at school knew about this as I had invited them for the function before we broke for the holidays. As I entered the school office I […]
On November 19, Men’s Day was celebrated across the world and promotional videos by consumer companies tried to remind us of the men we could always count on in our lives.Coincidentally, in the season finale of Satyamev Jayate, various participants debated the meaning of a ‘good man’ and how misunderstood the idea of masculinity was in […]