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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Debutant director Neeraj Ghaywan grasped that both life and death can co-exist in the same river when during a recce around the Ganges, he saw loss interwoven with the infinitude of existence and hope. A man sitting still in a boat holding a shrouded baby, looking at a distance.. unable to let go. And a corpse […]
A katori of kheer as an ice-breaker between a sulking father and a daughter. The birthday gift of a recorder that plays back the voice of a beloved interspersed with romantic songs. A furtive phone chat on a terrace amid clothes drying under the sun. The banter with a roadside chaat vendor. Strings of […]
Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai..main kisi pul sa.. thartharata hoon (You pass by like a train…I shudder, pulse like a bridge). These lines from a Dushyant Kumar poem in Neeraj Ghaywan’s debut film Masaan, take you back to the terrace of a small town home where in the middle of the night, you heard […]
Over a decade ago, at Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, I spoke with a youthful conviction on why Hindi cinema must never be dismissed as just another drug to keep the masses oblivious to the real issues of governance, poverty, disenfranchisement, corruption and more. When gently asked by the moderator, why Hindi cinema could not be […]
Serena Williams knows better than anyone else that even being a world-class player cannot insulate a woman from mindless and vicious criticism about her body, her race, her irritating disregard for how female tennis players should look and conduct themselves. Perhaps someone like Sania Mirza can empathise because she too has been judged […]
Jab kabhi tera naam lete hain… dil se hum intaqam lete hain meri barbadiyon ke afsane… mere yaron ka naam lete hain bas yahi ek jurm hai apna… hum muhabbat se kaam lete hain har qadam par gire par seekha… kaise girton ko tham lete hain (Whenever I take your name, I put my heart through agony.. […]
In the 1940s, a Tamil studio attempted a pan-Indian epic that cost over Rs 3 million and told the story of two royal siblings warring over the kingdom and a woman. The film was Chandralekha and it had a scale that till then had been seen only in Hollywood films. The famous drum scene […]
Last week, it was Shruti Seth and Kavita Krishnan. This week, it is Amartya Sen who is being hounded on Twitter. For saying that the government is interfering too much in the functioning of educational institutions among other things. All it needs is a dissenting view-point to get the Internet mob to spew vitriol. […]
I don’t have a daughter but if I did, would the Selfie with Daughter campaigners look at me benignly and welcome my inclusion in this online movement celebrating the father and daughter bond? Oh, they did not specify that, did they? So mothers can pose too? Yay for equal rights but the issue is […]
There is a scene in Bimal Roy’s Bandini where Nutan’s Kalyani is described as Annapurna…the goddess of an abundant kitchen. She is half in love with a rebel (Ashok Kumar) who comes every evening to discuss lyrical poetry with her father and enjoys her cooking but it is when he describes her as a woman […]
Food shows in India often turn into vanity projects with celebrity chefs faffing around, putting up uninspired stuff and garnishing it unfailingly with a mint leaf. The requisite research, the detailing of atmosphere, an interesting context, good production values and hosting skills that hold your attention are by and large missing in Indian food shows. […]
I recently gave away a decade -old collection of interior design magazines. Packed in them were my dreams of owning a space I can call my own. A home made with sun-baked bricks, lime-washed walls embedded with coloured glass to let in the sun in rainbow beams, recycled wood doors, a verandah that has […]