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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Artist Milind Nayak’s relationship with colour is mercurial. Colours is his hands are shadows and sunlight, tangled branches of mystery and the profusion of spring. Whether he is using pastels, mixed media or even water colours, his colours are not self effacing. They proclaim the joy of life, of existence, theirs and ours. They […]
On her birthday today, I remember ‘Alone’, a poem by Maya Angelou. A poem that recounts a moment in all our lives when we lie awake at night with a soul niggle that asks, “How to find my soul a home..where water is not thirsty and bread loaf is not stone?” And then comes the […]
GS Shenoy was a quiet, self-effacing force of Nature. It is only when he painted that you saw the swirling galaxies within, the many worlds within worlds. Interlocked pieces of thoughts. Thoughts with edges and texture and imprints of fading memories. Thoughts that are like scrunched up papers. Like rocks that want to melt. […]
A sharply sculpted face with cheekbones bouncing off light. Hair, rippling like silk across the screen. Sensuality that was wide-eyed innocence in one instant and overwhelmingly dark and compelling in another. Crystal clear diction. It is hard to describe Parveen Babi in conventional terms. She was pure sunshine in Amar Akbar Anthony. A chatty, infinitely entertaining journalist in Kala Patthar. A poised lady in red in Deewar, […]
Isn’t there something utterly beautiful about Vikram Gokhale? That glow about him that hasn’t faded with time? And how little we know about him. Not much has been written about Gokhale in the national press and it is not surprising considering how cinema coverage in our national newspapers is synonymous with Hindi films and their […]
Just a story in a newspaper. your life and death. A picture of you and the ones you loved more than life itself. but it’s just a picture a snatch from a better time. when you still were you. when you believed you could make it through. when the years had not chipped away at […]
The word icon is used so cheaply today. The fact that it has the word, con in it may have something to do with it. Perception is more important than substance. Image more important than truth. Marketing more important than creating. Fame and shame sometimes are not indistinguishable. And somehow it doesn’t matter. So strong […]
A heroine unconscious of her gender. Someone who stops a Home Minister’s car because, “I will plead no longer.. I ask for my father’s rights.” Someone who sits down her family and promises after relentless injustice has deprived them all of not just their land but their dignity in the courts and police […]
Was it coincidental that I wrote the introduction to the Chicken Soup for the Indian Woman’s Soul on the eve of Woman’s Day? As I wrote it many years ago, I recalled women who have triumphed in big and small ways and changed lives and perceptions without ever being acknowledged. Women who don’t bail out easily […]
I do not like habituated TV watching that leaves no aftertaste and so am watching it far less than usual and also because this is exam time and I would like to discipline myself before I discipline my son. We end up watching food shows though as he hopes to cook professionally some day […]
Doesn’t a joke fall flat when you tell it and laugh at it before anyone else does, then with everyone and after everyone has stopped? But yes, Seth MacFarlene has an infectious smile. Very.. infact. He can dance. He can sing. Can he host the Oscars? Well, ho and hum. Give us a minute. Also […]
There is a lot of walking in Neeraj Pandey’s Special 26. Everyone walks. While conducting conversations. On their way to and from heists. Sometimes in slow motion to the music of an era that instantly brings back the memories of the 80s. Right from the opening credits and yes, the background track, this film pays […]