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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Rekha will soon be seen playing Super Nani but the icon turns into an age-defying model in the film to teach her errant family a lesson. No, dowdy weepies for the lady.There are many faces of Bhanurekha Ganesan. The little girl who danced on a table in a white frilly frock to the tune […]
‘Travel’ is a beautiful word. It breathes deep, sets you free and replaces familiar routes, responses and landmarks with the unexpected, the surprising. As you leave behind a city you live and work in, an invisible string gets loosened and releases you. The sky opens up. The sunlight becomes more concentrated and pure. Green fields […]
There are many tales, documented and unsubstantiated about Nariman (Nari) Dossabhai Gandhi or Nari Gandhi as he was known as. He was one of the most remarkable creative voices in architecture and an article published in the eighties speculated that he was the inspiration behind Ayn Rand’s best-selling classic The Fountainhead where a brilliant architect builds the precursors of what […]
The Company Theatre completes two decades this year. All these years have amounted to something..to creating, to living and dreaming and moving on from one milestone to another. To a body of work and a repertoire that speaks of reinvention of not just theatre and entrenched ideas but of self. It could not have been […]
The Company Theatre was formed by Sheeba Chadha, Atul Kumar, Manish Chawdhary and Sanjeev Sharma in 1993 in New Delhi. This year it celebrates two decades of creativity, laughter, tears, toil, struggle and triumph. In a country addicted to cinema and cricket, for a theatre group to have come so far and created a new mindscape […]
Ever wondered why disaster movies show iconic architectural landmarks crumbling to pieces? Why terrorist attacks target buildings that stand for something more than just brick and mortar? Why September 11 was not just about a terrorist attack but a terrorist attack on the beating heart of New York? Why 26/11 was not just about […]
There is this moment in Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox where Irrfan Khan’s Saajan Fernandez says a name aloud for the first time. And it reminds one of Jess C. Scott’s famous quote, “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.” He […]
Almost five years later..I can still see it. Feel it. The day..a haze of gold across acres of plantation land in Samathur, a quiet village off Pollachi in Tamil Nadu. And I sat in the back yard of the 6000 square ft Shenbaga Vilaasam, a heritage house where time was in no hurry to […]
An overcast afternoon and the paper lamps in Ranga Shankara cafe glowed and swayed in the breeze. Friends, colleagues and members of author, playwright, mentor, poet Vijay Nair’s extended family slowly filled up the empty spaces and occupied the benches, chairs and even the steps leading to the cafe. The event organised by theatre […]
The first Chinese restaurant in Bangalore to open in a five star hotel. A restaurant that has since 1986, been associated with memories, yes, of China and of countless loyal guests who are treated by the staff as members of an extended family with personalised napkins and engraved chopsticks and even their favourite menus […]
“Send me out into another life Lord…because this one is growing faint. I do not think, it goes all the way.” These lines from W.S Merwin’s poem, `Words From a Totem Animal‘ are quoted by Frances Mayes, in her best selling book Under The Tuscan Sun which deliciously, sensuously recounts the restoration of a rambling home in Italy and a […]
The houses we live in, we first inhabit in our imagination. I love writers who use their imagination to paint living breathing homes that stay within us long after the books they reside in are shut and put away. I love the gracious Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca which is not […]