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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Looking for life affirming movies to watch? Here are a few. Ali (On Netflix), directed by Michael Mann is long and meandering but it has important things to say about race, power and how one man with the intention to not comply can challenge the majoritarian narrative about patriotism. Especially when the notion of patriotism […]
*A tribute to artist Satish Gujral who passed away on March 27 Much before I started writing about art and architecture, I read about Satish Gujral. And as a teenager, craned my neck from the window of a taxi to catch a glimpse of the glorious Belgian embassy he had designed in Delhi. Something about […]
When an actor who built his career playing the poster boy of anti-establishment resistance tweets fake news about how “bacterial energies” during amavas can be dissipated by clapping and shankh naad, you realise once again that opportunistic artists always sell what is in demand. They know the season of discontent and dissent is over and […]
Ghayal was the mainstream version of protest cinema in 1990. This was a time when we looked not at each other to find fault but at flawed governance. A time when it was heroic to stand up to authority and brutal policing, to the nexus between judiciary, police, politics and big money, to fight for […]
“Kajol stuns in a royal blue wrap dress as she posts a boomerang of herself swirling and pouting.” This is a Republic World report about the success party of a film about rape. Other media outlets are busy telling us who came to celebrate this film that has also been accused of plagiarism by Abhishek […]
Ruchi Narayan’s Guilty, (now streaming on Netflix) is more or less, a 119 minute summation of the core premise of 13 Reasons Why. With a few exceptions made for the post Me Too furore in the Indian context. This is a quick and accurate articulation of rape culture where the final act is just […]
*This piece was written on March 3 The shift towards a more lucrative ideological stand began with Baby for Akshay Kumar. Or perhaps the seeds of opportunism were always there. After all, here is a hero who went from a rebellious lover boy in his debut film Saugandh to a super human khiladi to an […]
Lisa Ray’s memoir Close to the Bone reads like a sumptuous literary work. It is an important story about isolation rooted in the lack of self worth, about the journey into the heart of darkness, death, bruising relationships and recovery. She is unfailingly kind to the people she writes about and brutally honest about her […]
Films made on women acting out their anger don’t do as well as men losing it spectacularly. The recent critical and commercial success of Joker proves once again that empathy is a mercurial element and reacts differently to stories of men and women. Female victims of extreme violence are seldom as well-known as their killers […]
*This piece was written on February 16, 2020 The latest footage of policemen in combat gear storming the Jamia Millia Islamia library on December 15, 2019 sums up the nature of the beast. This domesticated beast is India’s law and order machinery and is unleashed strategically by the powerful to settle scores and by and […]
*This post was written on January 19, 2020 Unlike the Germany of the thirties, there seems to be no need of a propaganda minister in India to steer entertainment towards exclusionary nationalism. Hindi cinema seems to be doing very well on its own in that department. Many film makers and actors have been busy playing […]
A friend once shared how her daughter was stopped by a teacher in her school and told , “Your breasts are too big for you to walk like that.” She went on to develop an apologetic, stooping posture for life. Shame is coded in the DNA of a young girl. And docility is force fed. […]