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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Fear is the outer layer that sheath we cower under hiding our scars living half lives afraid of anything that comes too close.. sunlight thorns rain laughter pain ** Afraid, we will lose our way if we let go of all that we know and recognise and cling to ** We watch life through half-shut […]
The green light of a distant dock twinkling tantalisingly. Whispering of irretrievable gifts, of hope. Of innocence..that time chipped away at soundlessly. A man, alone on the other side of the bay, reaching out, trying to grasp it. ** Diaphanous curtains filling up a room with wind, and luxurious lassitude. Beautiful shirts. Spun out of […]
The manic energy of trance has weaned a lot of young Hindi film music fans off familiar loops and the old robes of comforting grooves. It is not surprising then that Hindi film music as we knew it, has left the building and gone for a walk along unusual paths. ** Amartya Rahut’s addictive, mind […]
Long minutes, maybe a few hours were spent this week in the heart of a police station where I for the first time witnessed the daily workings of a place we usually associate with dark images of intimidation, apathy and incompetence, especially if you are a woman with a complaint. This one was surprisingly..for want […]
In the hospitality business, Taj is one of those rare brands that represent all three dimensions of time. Past, present and future. Nostalgia, modernity and foresight. At Vivanta by Taj, Yeshwantpur on the outskirts of Bangalore, you see the perfect blend of the three. A courtyard tree reminiscent of Taj West End’s famous tamarind […]
The memories of being beaten up in a Bangalore bus in 1995 have faded away. Bangalore to me is a safe city where I have moved around freely without being conscious of my clothes and have worked late hours as well. But yes, the sense of personal safety any city gives a woman can shatter […]
Madness…poise heedlessness..choice silence…noise wonderment..belief suffering..relief abandon in patterns fireflies in empty lanterns movement.. stillness stillness..movement Me..You You.. me The quest for more. For less. Flows. And Ebbs.
The thing about the past is that it never comes back and yet never really leaves. Shamshad Begum for instance is not just a Wikipedia note with a birthday and a death day. She is a memory for those of us who grew up with her songs. Though for all purposes, the woman who sang […]
The following piece was written post a series of blasts in Bangalore in 2008..today another bomb attack in the city refreshed the horror.. Terrorism kills more than just people. It blasts to bloody pieces, our faith in the ultimate rightness of all things and in the idea that life is beautiful. It shatters […]
What the remakes of old classic films like Chashme Baddoor miss out on is an ingredient called innocence because you can’t ever recapture what is lost. Or fake the sense of wonder conveyed by Farooque Sheikh and Dipti Naval on their first date as they ordered a Tutti Fruity ice cream in a leafy […]
I do not know if this matters. If anything matters. Especially when close to 4000 lives did not matter. When the survivors who were left behind to mourn them and battle an implacable system, did not matter. Have not mattered for over 29 years. Today the news that Congress leader Jagdish Tytler “may be in […]
Words. So many words making up noise and clutter ** Words.. Empty Full Unspent Overused ** And silence… infuriating when it refuses to budge and melt into words ** And sometimes liberating when it says what we don’t want to hear when it says.. “This is it.. there is no more. To hear. […]