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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A few important things were noted by the social media in the past few days. The Daily Show’s host Jon Stewart spoke his mind about America’s response to the mass shooting in a South Carolina church. The birth anniversary of slain Pakistani activist Sabeen Mahmood was observed with a Qawali recital at T2F, the […]
When an institution produces artistes who are going to possibly shape the way we perceive the world, it must have inspirational administrators and teachers. The enormity of the influence an enlightened guide can have on a student can be seen in the way former FTII (Film and Television Institute) students talk about mentors like Kumar […]
At about 7.50 am on Wednesday, architect Bijoy Ramachandran of Hundred hands messaged his acquaintances: “Sad news. Correa passed away at 11.45 pm, Tuesday night.” For those who had heard 84-year-old architect, planner, activist and theoretician Charles Correa at the JN Tata Auditorium in Bengaluru last year, this moment brought a sense of personal loss […]
Confessional writing can tear you apart, plunge deep into your darkest memories and like EM Forster would say, spread them out in the sunlight so that you as well those reading you can know the meaning of them. But there is confessional writing that seeks to understand and resolve pain and writing that just wants […]
‘Maang meri..sindoor tumhare naam ka..haath mere..choodiyan tumhare naam ki, kokh meri..khoon mera par baccha tumhare naam ka..tumhari iss duniya mein kya kuch bhi hai mere naam ka?” When Vidya Balan’s Vasudha says these words to her insanely possessive husband (the unerring Rajkumar Yadav) in Hamari Adhuri Kahani, you recall the 80s when Mahesh Bhatt basically […]
Actor Vishakha Singh is trending on social media right now as is actor Aarthi Agarwal but their stories could not be more different. Vishakha Singh reacted to an obscene comment on her fan page and dared the offender to show his real face in his display picture. She also asked him if he commented on […]
The Maggi controversy has tainted the glow of memories that were formed as an entire nation gathered to watch Hum Log in the early eighties and to salivate over a new wonder snack that was, ‘‘fast to cook and good to eat.” Hum Log was Manohar Shyam Joshi’s seminal story about a lower-middle-class Indian […]
Why would a woman whose marriage is a painful farce stay with her husband for 30 long years? Perhaps for the joy of chatting up her son on a luxurious sofa in a beautiful home that resembles a Balinese resort and where a leaf falls noiselessly in a pool. She is Neelam (Shefali Shah) and […]
Madhuri Dixit recently received a notice from the Haridwar Food and Drug Administration for endorsing the nutritional value of Maggi, after the UP government found dangerously high levels of lead in a batch of noodles. While a debate rages about whether brand ambassadors can be held responsible for the quality of products, there is another side to the […]
George Miller’s explosively powerful new film, Mad Max: Fury Road is creating a worldwide debate about its utter disregard for the masculine grandstanding its previous outings were known for. But then George Miller is the kind of a director who really does not play by the rules. He can go from the sweaty and steely […]
Aruna Shanbaug died this week. Officially. She now merits tributes and a formal farewell though cognitive and full-bodied life, as she knew it, ended in 1973. How can anyone make sense of how the light in her was snuffed out with a dog chain during a rape so ghastly that it rendered her comatose for […]
At a meeting in Delhi recently, the Union Cabinet approved provisions to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012. A key revision states that children below 14 cannot be employed anywhere, except in non-hazardous family enterprises or the entertainment industry. But if you state this differently, it becomes clear that the amendment allows […]