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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For a few years after we were married, we exchanged presents on Valentine’s Day. Then we reached this cynical phase, when we didn’t believe in celebrating or observing a day, so we conveniently ignored it. I still wrote a couple of blogs about him, about us, with a dash of mushiness every year on February […]
2015 was the year of letting go; it was the year of saying no. What I reckoned as my dream job began crushing my soul. I said no to it, and went back to my desk job. When I was stuck in a crevice created by a moral dilemma — should I let my furry-friend go on […]
I was eight, when I participated in my first painting competition. It was conducted in a park on a sultry, summer evening. I wore one of my favourite cotton dresses, carried my water-colours, fancy brushes in a rucksack, and held my sister’s hands, as she walked me to the park. It was filled with hundreds of […]
”There was never anything wrong with keeping up a little optimism over the flood.” That line from Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter arrested my attention when I was reading the book by candlelight a week ago. It was a dark week in many senses. My beloved city was flooded, making thousands of people homeless. […]
The rain had stopped being furious. But, the motorists were murderous with their grumbling vehicles and grumpy faces. On any other day, I would have joined their never-ending serpentine queue. But that day, with a sinister smile on my face, I dodged the gridlocks, and reached home without complaining. Because, the bicycle is one of […]
A minute before I was about to write this blog, I wrestled with an array of thoughts. Should I write about this? Should the world know? Is it necessary? Then I gave room to this thought: It might help somebody. And, that’s enough! I just finished Jerry Pinto’s Em and The Big Hoom. As always, […]
Times were dark. As I swallowed the last set of my antidepressants one night, I texted my friend, “I don’t think I can refill my meds for the next two days. I am going to be super anxious.” She worked out all possibilities to refill my pills; sadly, her efforts ended in vain. I was okay for […]
This time, last year, I had a routine. A routine that I loathed. Wake up. Be grumpy. Drink coffee. Be grumpy. Shower. Be grumpy. Get ready for work. Be grumpy. Work. Be grumpy. Come back home. Be grumpy. Work from home. Be grumpy. Go to bed. Repeat. I was grumpier than The Official Grumpy Cat. I made no […]
“It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good […]
A couple of months ago, on a stormy night, I packed my bags, held Boo’s leash, and boarded an auto, after walking out of a life which I thought would get better. To my dismay, the life that I had lived for a decade had just disintegrated. I was torn between taking another big leap of faith, […]
When we hear about women, who are ill-treated in Afghanistan, Pakistan and a few other countries, we often catch ourselves feeling happy about living in India, where we presume that many women are independent, safe and considered ‘equals’. While the recent crimes unleashed against women prove that this country is not really women-friendly, I […]
A week ago, I packed all my personal stuff, bid adieu to a couple of friends and left the organisation where I pursued my dreams for about one and a half years. While I wasn’t emotional, it occurred to me that my colleagues couldn’t find a minute to move away from their desks to send […]