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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Success is so overrated in a world where mere survival is a great gift. Robin Williams’ recent suicide proves once again that just success is not enough to keep us all afloat and yet we celebrate success more than the courage it takes for ordinary people to keep going regardless of the hardships life throws […]
The play Taoos Chaman Ki Myna, was recently staged at AD Rangamandira in Bangalore and it was the culmination of an alchemy between Naiyer Masud, Gillo,Theatre Repertory and Atul Tiwari. The genesis of the play is interesting. For starters, Masud, a Persian and Urdu scholar is along with Manto and Qurratulain Hyder, part of a holy trinity of writers who truly transcend the […]
I pride myself in being an extrovert. But the last two years in Kuwait, have made me recoil a little bit. I keep to myself, I have really started enjoying hanging out by myself. I accord myself the joy of becoming a more independent, self-sufficiently happy person. But then somewhere in the corner of my […]
What we learn from Naseeruddin Shah’s autobiography And Then One Day..A Memoir (Penguin Books India/Hamish Hamilton), is what we need to learn. No more, no less. Nothing extravagant about milestones reached, rewards gathered, boxes ticked. Like tempered chocolate or like a quintessential Naseer performance, the writing is perfectly poised between a melting point and gradual, cool normalcy. This celebrity […]
I am guilty of living in the past. I can’t really explain why. It’s like an aching. A longing. A strong conviction that the past held magic amidst the mundane. The glittering golden glory days of yore – far superior than the modern day drudgery. Something about those bygone days captivates me. Something about […]
The Man Booker hype surrounding this book almost overwhelms it. Almost but not quite. Because in The Lives of Others (Vintage/Random House India, distributed by Rupa Publications), Neel Mukherjee has taken an old canvas and painted atop it; the story is by no means new, the telling is not really unique, yet it grips the […]
Ever since the Famous Author promoted the half- idea, I have been wondering who originally developed this earth-shattering concept. Was it Aryabhata, who after inventing the zero decided he might as well throw in another idea, two for the price of one? Was it Kalidasa who, watching an unsatisfactory monsoon do (half) its thing, decided […]
Wo aa rahen hai jo biimaar kii dawaa ke liye Khamosh baithe hain sab chaaraagar duaa ke liye (he is expected to arrive with a cure for my pain..and the healers quietly wait too, with their hands raised in prayer) These lines are from a ghazal Begum Akhtar wrote though few know just what became […]
When I was a kid I had a favorite TV show, called Jungle Book. It was a time when India and Doordarshan had good shows, even animations or adaptations. Jungle Book was an animation of the celebrated book ( directed by none other that Fumio Kurokawa) and since the book was written in India, perhaps […]
In parts, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider replays keynotes from a classic Shakespearean dirge with a sly wink. So we are offered the jovial grave diggers. The skull gnashing in glee. The sinner in a moment of redeeming prayer. The ghost who is not a ghost afterall but is Roohdar..the keeper of another man’s soul and all its agony. […]
Watching Eega reinstated in me the faith that films can still conjure up ‘wonderment’ from ‘seemingly’ the silliest of ideas provided the filmmaker decides to complement his technical skills with certain audaciousness. A bitter-sweet experience which left me exhilarating and exasperating at the same time, the film has to be the most outlandishly inventive and entertaining film to have […]
You can touch the surface of life or live it inside out. You can just see what is visible or sometimes close your eyes and open your mind. And perceive the intangible as well. Few films manage to make you realise the difference between connecting with life and just skimming through it but Sai Paranjpye’s Sparsh did […]