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 am sitting in a cab that rushes at 80 kms an hour. My gaze is fixed on the clear azure sky, but my mind is muddy; the noise in my head is deafening. The driver sings along to a retro song that is on the radio. On any other day, I would have smiled the […]
Calvin breathes gently. Despite the pain and exhaustion, despite the air of resignation that hangs around him, he seems peaceful. The morning sun is brutal, but Calvin continues to lie in the blinding brightness that escapes the curtains. Calvin. Our sunshine. Father, Mother, and I have locked our gazes on the boy. If our thoughts […]
I am sitting by Lake Shore Drive on my last day in Chicago. A woman is sitting by the shore, sketching the long skyline of Chicago. A gay couple kiss each other. A group of girls celebrate their friend’s birthday party. And a naughty Baltimore Oriole chases me. I sit there for hours with my […]
Boo is resting after her morning walk; her head is on her favourite panda and she seems to be half-asleep, as though she is reluctant to slip into slumber because she wants to include herself in my parents’ conversation. My parents are having their breakfast, listening to some devotional songs, and discussing the beautiful, mundane things in […]
“What should I wear for the wedding?” Sam asked me, when we were on our way to buy clothes for our friend’s wedding. Without thinking, I said he should wear a white shirt and a pair of beige trousers. Louise Phillipe was his favourite brand. We picked up a beautiful white shirt from a Louise Phillipe […]
William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault set the tone from the very beginning; I knew that nothing would go right for Lucy. Her story was melancholic, but it didn’t make me sob. I felt a distant pain, and it lingered for a while, as though my mind played a sad song over and over again […]
I read Paul Kalanithi’s essay in The New Yorker in January, and pre-ordered When Breath Becomes Air. The book arrived last month, but I couldn’t muster the courage to read it. Although I was reading a lot of books that affected me deeply, I still shuddered at the mere thought of reading Kalanithi’s memoir, only because […]
I finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love last night, and I wrestled with my thoughts to decide if I should really blog about the book. I did not want to write about it because, when so many people have already read the book, how is my little opinion going to change the course of the world? But […]
The conference room was cold. Maybe, it seemed colder because I was waiting to be interviewed by two editors. I had applied for the role of a reporter/sub-editor at a popular newspaper. My brain was almost ready to shut down, for I had already written a long test that checked my understanding of ‘affect’, and […]
I have been weathering a storm since last year. So, I have been blogging about how unfair, ruthless, and hard life is. Although the storm hasn’t abated yet, I am seeing a bright, bright ray of sunshine now. I am insanely happy today. A few months ago, when it dawned on me that my relationship had really gone down the drain, I had […]
I have been reading voraciously these days. My love for reading has begun irking the folks around me. They often remark, “Why do you want to read so much? Do something else. Reading is not everything.” But, I do not tell them that I think reading is the warmest, healthiest way to fill the abyss […]
A tired squeaky toy on the divan. One of its eyes is missing. A well-used enormous ball near the shoe rack. I step on it inadvertently, and it goes, “squeeeaaak.” I jump, and land on a brown, wet, stuffed toy. Its head is empty. Little cloud-like pieces of cotton lie around it, a graphic […]