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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Telephonic interviews take away the visual texture from a story but you don’t miss it when you talk to theatre, TV and film actor Heeba Shah. She speaks with immense clarity and leaves no awkward pauses for you to fill. Between tackling cinema of multiple genres, doing theatre and moving homes, she performed an Ismat […]
“Javed bhai, hum Dilli haar gaye hain!” (We have lost Delhi), yells Naseeruddin Shah as a violently bitter sepoy in Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (1978). That scene is hard to forget. As is the fact that it was on the sets of Junoon that Shah first met Ismat Chughtai, one of the bravest literary and […]
“Sirf ehsas hai rooh se mehsoos karo…pyaar ko pyaar hi rehne do koi naam na do.” (It is just a feeling..let the soul revel in it..let love be.. just love..try not to name it) So that in a nutshell is Gulzar for you. A man who does not name the obvious but will articulate what cannot be […]
Shama Zaidi does not want to talk about her mother Qudsia Zaidi nee Umt-ul-qudoos Abdullah because you do not talk about a lifetime of love and loss over a telephone wire. 2014 is the centenary year of Begum Zaidi, writer, social worker, theatre producer and founder of the Hindustani Theatre in Delhi in 1954. […]
Do writers need social media?Chetan Bhagat apparently does but not JK Rowling or Salman Rushdie. However, Rushdie enjoys his Twitter feuds with critics and rivals, affording us enjoyable glimpses into his wit and his unvarnished human need to answer a jibe with a retort. The social media also is graced by the likes of the […]
“It’s an awful thing to do to a woman my age, leave her alone with her thoughts.” With rain streaming across the kitchen window, Lauren Bacall is presiding over a breakfast table conversation in A Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). She talks about what it is like when the spirit is young but life has […]
There is a reason why superheroes click. It is because they promise you absolute assurance in a rather unpredictable and occasionally dangerous world. That no matter how many explosions rip the world apart, you will be safe…if only in the confines of the movie theatre. Singham is one such muscle-bound- superhero, with an enviable waistline, […]
“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome. Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death,” so said Robin Williams in Patch Adams (1998). ** Who else but Williams with a clown’s nose and a philosopher’s wisdom […]
In Bangalore to address the students of Indian Institute of Management, legendary Architect B V Doshi strolls around the campus. As he pauses to make a point, he is framed by a flowering creeper, crests and hollows of green grass and thousands of trees. It is simple to see in this snapshot, the sum of […]
On a routine day in a mall, while browsing for gifts for a friend, I heard shots..or crackers. It is hard to tell the difference but considering the world we live in, the mind begins to replay inexplicable campus and mall shootings, 26/11, stories of people running for their lives in the middle of a […]
“If I should have a daughter, instead of ‘Mom’, she’s gonna call me ‘Point B’, because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get […]
A few days after Kishore Kumar’s birth anniversary, the ring tone of his son and singer Amit Kumar echoes a song befitting the occasion, Ye mahfil yun hi sajegi.. ye duniyan yun hi chalegi… jo dhadkan kisi ki ruke tum ruko naa..(The celebrations will continue, the world will go on…if a heartbeat stops somewhere..don’t stop […]