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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Perspective. That sets what we see apart from what really exists. Like the blind-folded men who touched different parts of an elephant and proclaimed that a trunk was the whole elephant or perhaps the tail was, we see the world in our likeness. When in reality, as Rajkumar Hirani’s PK reminds a religious absolutist, “You […]
Actor and media personality Shenaz Treasury has had an eventful week. As a spontaneous reaction to the Uber rape case in Delhi, she posted an open letter on her Facebook page. The letter was addressed to influential thought leaders in India, all of them men incidentally. She shared personal episodes of violation and stated that […]
Just a few days before December 16, the second anniversary of the Nirbhaya tragedy, actor, producer and activist Dia Mirza was in town. The Uber rape case was on her mind, as were the sexual crimes against young girls in Bengaluru’s schools. She said, “What kind of man rapes a woman… a little girl? This […]
With every message that leaves novelist Bilal Tanweer’s email account, travel these famous lines from Aleksandar Hemon’s 2008 novel, The Lazarus Project: “All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.” It is easy to see […]
When was the last time you saw a Hindustani music legend in a video that reformulated the conventions of popular and classical idioms? Chances are that the image of Shubha Mudgal orchestrating monsoon in a chawl will flash through your mind. You will remember her rousing vocals in Ab ke saawan and in Man ke […]
A picture of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, taken possibly in the 1960s, is on the cover of his latest anthology. His curly, unruly hair tumbles down his combat jacket. His jeans are frayed and with his boots making a statement all on their own, he looks like a cross between Che and George Harrison. This image, […]
2014 is slowly fading into the past as a collage of memories and we eagerly await a new beginning, a new journey through 2015. The twilight between the years is a good time to reflect upon the past experiences that have shaped us into what we are at this moment, and to weave dreams of […]
And now here she was, sitting in her balcony, wrapped in a Pashmina shawl, sipping her Earl Grey tea. She lived in Darjeeling these days, but her loyalties lay with her English favourite. Sally had lived in London for a few years to acquire a degree in Fashion Designing. The British influence was difficult to shake off. She got […]
The temple city of Rishikesh is around 250 kms away from Delhi. It is a famous weekend destination spot for the city folk from the National Capital Region (NCR). Rishikesh is a melting pot of spirituality, adventure and home to numerous well known temples. It is also a favourite tourist destination for foreigners who visit it for few […]
Have you ever been whistled out of a public park, shooed while halting at a parking place, insulted at a railway ticket window, mocked at a police station? If you were a common citizen of India, you must have been. Admit it. Born and brought up in India, I have faced this and often my friends have told […]
S G Vasudev’s retrospective Recollections Reconnections series will be on display at Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore till January 10. The national award-winning artist is reflective as he recalls the young man who once said, “My hands cannot stay idle. They either have to draw or paint.” The years have revealed his love for the […]
We see what we want or perhaps need to see in cinema, in music, in the books we read, the people we meet. On days we are open to life, we see even the yellow butterfly flitting past the auto, the way a pink bloom falls on a car bonnet from a neglected tree, how […]