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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Films made on women acting out their anger don’t do as well as men losing it spectacularly. The recent critical and commercial success of Joker proves once again that empathy is a mercurial element and reacts differently to stories of men and women. Female victims of extreme violence are seldom as well-known as their killers […]
She’s been named Damini, Braveheart, Nirbhaya and counting. Now we know her real name and to that 23- year- old girl from Delhi, I, for one, doff my hat. If ever we’ve seen a symbol of courage, of hope, of fortitude, of fighting against all odds, she’s been it. ** Having been subjected to the […]
In the years I lived in India in my parents’ home overlooking the slums, we would see drunken husbands beating up their wives. Girls pulled out of school and sent off to do housework. Polygamous husbands and their impoverished families. I always thought it had something to do with being poor and uneducated. I was […]
I’ve mentioned before, I’m relatively new to Kolkata.. Calcutta. Before coming here, I’ve never had domestic help. Today, I have a cook, a cleaner and someone to look after the little ones. I’m a little spoilt, if truth be told. I’m living an easy life, free to do as I choose. But having this freedom […]
Yet another gang rape, yet another spate of protests and furor and now people are busy discussing and arguing whether Mumbai is going the Delhi way. To begin with, where does this question even come from ? Is one city safer than the other ? In India, there have been reports of tourists being gang […]
As we are entering into the 65th year of Independence, a zeal, a fervor can be felt all around; and moreover, as we celebrate the glorious achievements of our six Olympians, who have made the whole nation proud with their feats, here are six cases which put every Indian, worth his salt, hang his head […]
I haven’t watched Homi Adajania’s Cocktail but from what I hear, it achieves something no different from the message sent by goons of the so called Hindu Janajagrana Vedike on Saturday who raided a resort in Padil, and thrashed and slapped girls for partying in “indecent clothes” and consuming, alcohol. Deepika Padukone’s Veronica was not thrashed […]
The air is still. Almost as if it has decided to see just how quietly it can creep, undetected, through her home. Not a leaf has moved. Not a sigh has escaped her lips. Not a word of this article she has read has stayed back except one: raped. The images swirl in her head. […]
Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS), condemn the assault on three women under-trials, Angela Sontakey, 42, Sushma Ramteke, 22, and Jyoti Chorghe,19, in the Mumbai District Women’s Prison in Byculla. On March 31, they witnessed an assault upon some other inmates by the prison staff. When they tried to intervene, they too were attacked by the staff. […]
The two convicts in the Pune BPO employee rape-cum-murder case, Purshottam Borate and Pradip Komokate, were sentenced to death, sometime back. News of sexual violence against women sends me into an overdrive.I am approaching 50 but am as angry, as touchy about this business of the second sex as I was, 30 years ago. The reason […]