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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It is surprising how just three days of bone warming sun, soft sand, towering palm trees and chilled breezers with friends who have shared over a decade of my life, can expunge a couple of years of world-weariness. Which is why after a long hiatus, the first thing I felt compelled to write was a […]
Curtains of fog cloaked the ancient city of Agra at the crack of dawn in early January. A fog so thick that walking through it felt like ferreting through a bucket of whipped cream. Despite the hindrance it posed to daily lives, the streets had already begun whirring into action. Store shutters were noisily rolled […]
The only part that can be appropriately labelled as ‘excruciating’ in a 3.5 week vacation home (India), is perhaps the 20+ hours spent cooped up in an air-plane or counting crows during layovers. An 8 hour flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, wandering aimlessly through the occluded corridors of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport before boarding the next […]
A pea-shaped face peeked from behind a set of rusted iron doors at the Taj Mahal palace as I firmly rapped the heavy door-knocker against its metal backrest. “I wish to look around”, I said determinedly in response to the quizzical expression that stared back at me. The possessor of the tiny, question-marked face – Abhinav, a […]
The city of Bhopal is like a mysterious old bard. In a tattered gunny bag swung over one of his atrophied shoulders, he hides a treasure trove of rare gems plucked right out of history books. It takes effusive flattery, gentle persuasion and an unrelenting perseverance to get him to allow a peek into his […]
Experiencing a city during the festive season is like meeting someone on their wedding day. People tend to be on their best behaviour the day they are getting married. In fact, even the most obnoxious ones are amiable and benign on this day and just so, even the most vicious cities are friendly and becoming […]
Amsterdam is like a mysterious package that materialises one fine morning at your doorstep, kind courtesy a secret admirer. At first, you are sceptical and a tad bit scared to open it but then curiosity gets the better of you. With a slight tug, the strings come undone and the flaps swing open. Upon peeking […]
For most of my childhood years, I believed with a certain unwavering conviction (that only kids are known to possess), that Papa was no different than one of my bicycle riding, hop-scotch playing, squeals of joy producing little friends. There was something very light hearted and guileless about him that appealed immensely to us kiddies. […]
In the midst of ramshackle buildings in Detroit, a vibrant marketplace mushrooms every Saturday like a bold stroke of happiness and hope against the dreary canvas of poverty and neglect. Here, under a spotlessly blue sky, with the sun shining merrily upon the city, a large warehouse stretches across six blocks. Within its premises, hundreds of local […]
There is something about the ocean that strikes a latent chord within. It moves me infinitely, makes me want to turn poetic, urges me to relax and bury my feet in the soft folds of sand, wishes for me to turn introspective and infuses in me large doses of strength as it rumbles and gurgles like an indomitable […]
‘Continue 88 miles on I10 N to Houston’ – instructs a female voice emanating from the tiny black GPS on the dashboard. As if on cue, I recline my backrest, stretch my legs and relax. The view from my window is a fine treat for my ever hungry imagination and soon enough on a puffy […]
Every inch of landscape in a three mile radius around Hollywood screams of glamour, showbiz and drama. Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck beam at us from large posters that hang alongside the winding road . Upscale apartment complexes and palatial estates seem to look down their noses at us as we make our way to […]