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 have always been proud of the fact that my family embraced different cultures and religions with equal love and joy. My father is a Hindu Rajput from Gharwal, Uttrakhand and my mother a Muslim from Srinagar, Kashmir. They fell in love in the 80’s and got married after a little resistance from some of […]
So David Guetta played at the HUDA grounds in Delhi. The crowd? Well, there were girls in formal gowns. I imagined what they must have said to each other before dressing formal. “C’mon we are going for a live concert, you know what that means? Pull out that gown I wore to Shilu’s reception! Yes, […]
Books… Who says it is bad to immerse yourself in them? They say, “Live someone else’s life? That’s rubbish. They are fictional characters.” Fictional? Then why do I feel I know them, have felt them in me? Experienced what they do? They say,“Because you want to be miserable. Life is perfect. Count your blessings.” Optimists […]
The equator it is, where I lie sprawled, stuffing myself with freshly plucked plums from the garden that lies in the other half of the planet. I must leave some for the days to come, The territory has been seized, we don’t have access to those trees anymore. The trees that we planted on Family […]
Time flows. “Situations change. People change.” Forever is a myth. Everybody moves on. Memories don’t. Memories know not of this art. They persist..linger.. To strangle the heart and poison the soul, Bringing freezing flashbacks of feelings I would never know again. A funny thing, memory. Sometimes it fades. Like a shadow that gets engulfed by […]
I wrapped it in multiple layers of amber satin. I put it inside a wooden box. The one gifted to me by my grandma. Beautiful walnut wood. Her initials on it. Then I took the box and buried it deep. As deep as I could dig. Deep till I felt it could not re-surface. But […]
Nafisa sat perched on the edge of her terrace, reading a poignant tale of lost love. Kemal was trying to absorb the fact, that his beloved Fusun was now a happily married woman. Each word in the story reflecting his pain and piercing through Nafisa’s chest. Just then the sky boomed with the soulful sound of the […]
A puppet with two strings attached to opposite ends Each being manoeuvred by a different puppeteer If one pulls UP, the other Down Painful.. The life of a puppet with two strings attached. Given a choice which string will the puppet cut? Maybe both? Or none? Can’t choose between one.. Such is the life of a puppet […]
In her dreams, Innayat always woke up to the enchanting and re-assuring sound of the morning azaan, and opened the windows, which her nani would slyly shut after she had slept. The morning breeze would bring with it, freshness and a whiff of roses, the pine trees, the first batch of Kashmiri rotis being baked […]
Like the scarf flowing out from the small window of her carriage, the clouds float swiftly in the sky. Peasants are not meant to love or be loved, Still I fell. Fell into a love as deep as my heart.. But the white scarf waves a goodbye.. And I live in pieces. Like glass that shattered on the floor. Each piece reflecting a different […]
I stared at my hands in the bright sunlight, I stared some more under a flash bulb. I aimed the spotlight at my palms and was finally able to see the tiny lines cutting across each other. They told tales of every thought that ever crossed my mind. Revealing a life I had been walking around […]
I walked into the little yellow room, full of books and mugs, pens and papers, old and new, rusted and fresh, chaotic mix of memories, yet the most peaceful in the house. Where sweet tunes of silence play on an old record, where you and I share our thoughts, Where we dance on ‘aint no […]