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 picture of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, taken possibly in the 1960s, is on the cover of his latest anthology. His curly, unruly hair tumbles down his combat jacket. His jeans are frayed and with his boots making a statement all on their own, he looks like a cross between Che and George Harrison. This image, […]
S G Vasudev’s retrospective Recollections Reconnections series will be on display at Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore till January 10. The national award-winning artist is reflective as he recalls the young man who once said, “My hands cannot stay idle. They either have to draw or paint.” The years have revealed his love for the […]
We see what we want or perhaps need to see in cinema, in music, in the books we read, the people we meet. On days we are open to life, we see even the yellow butterfly flitting past the auto, the way a pink bloom falls on a car bonnet from a neglected tree, how […]
One of the most surprising roles Deven Verma did was that of a domineering husband in Gulzar’s Mere Apne. He makes a brief appearance as Meena Kumari’s memory of a man who she feared as much as she loved. Feared because he was unpredictable and almost cruel. And loved because he could give his life for others. There […]
It’s architect, planner, activist and theoretician Charles Correa himself on the stage of the JN Tata Auditorium in Bengaluru and what he once said about Corbusier’s architecture in Chandigarh, comes to mind, “Corbusier has sought to create an architecture of passion. No sotto-voce, no politeness but like Wagner-thunder in the concert hall.” * Correa’s voice is weak and broken but […]
On November 19, Men’s Day was celebrated across the world and promotional videos by consumer companies tried to remind us of the men we could always count on in our lives.Coincidentally, in the season finale of Satyamev Jayate, various participants debated the meaning of a ‘good man’ and how misunderstood the idea of masculinity was in […]
Sometime in 2008, Talat Aziz was singing at a concert when the audience began to request a Mehdi Hassan ghazal. Hassan was grievously sick back home in Pakistan but on an impulse, Aziz called him from the stage and put the conversation on speaker mode so that the ailing maestro could hear chants of, […]
Food is history, geography, a tug of nostalgia, a memory, a personal story, an emotion, a smell, an aftertaste, a sense of home. Though I am not a foodie, my first book replayed the compounded smell of agarbatties and rasgullas in a cinema hall canteen in Missamari. And the street food in Patiala. The kind I […]
“Film kitni bhi hatke ho, log dekhenge to baith ke hi,” says Govinda’s fading superstar to an author suffering from writer’s block in Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK’s Happy Ending. The hero adds for good effect,”don’t try to teach people the meaning of life after they have bought a ticket for Rs 300.” So the […]
“James Dean was an acting sonnet. Marlon was a planet unto himself. But he needed to explore his gift and fail with it. I always felt success had an adverse effect on him.” So said Al Pacino. The man who grew up watching Dean’s vehement talent. As a young boy who enjoyed acting, he was […]
A single powerful thought can change the course of a life. Or many. Who would have imagined that 14,800 cancer patients would receive critical palliative care over 20 years only because in 1992, Kishore Rao, General Manager of Madura Coats, took early retirement to initiate the Karnataka Chapter of the Indian Cancer Society? The momentous […]
“I fell in love with my then girlfriend and now wife over a bowl of fish curry she cooked for me. The best I have ever tasted. She is a chef too and favours more modern flavours. And we have two kitchens in our home. An open contemporary one where she does her modern stuff […]