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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Chef Ali Mkram has the kind of face that reminds you of orange orchards and happy family picnics. A face of contented joy and peace. That he is from Syria, working in Bangalore as a chef for possibly Bangalore’s only authentic Lebanese restaurant is one of the many paradoxes you will see at The Ranoosh. […]
My most resonant memory of 70s music is when during the preparations of our school annual functions, we would hear Lipps Incorporated’s Funky Town again and again. And again. We had no access to Western music except on radio and how this record landed up in a small town and in a school library beats […]
She wears altered waist coats of her politician father, swaps jhumkas for a gun, dances raunchily in front of her grandmother, is Tendulkar to her brothers, swears and rains abuses with passion on foes, drives an open jeep, is not afraid of anything or anyone between the heaven up there and the hell that Almore […]
Mothers are born flawed. If they don’t see imperfections in themselves, which is unlikely, someone else will. But these questions and doubts a mother faces today are unique to the times. Our grandmothers were different. They were undivided souls. They did not, most of the time, think of themselves as creatures of personal ambition. My […]
You can’t unmake or remake .. or break her.. because she picked her scattered bones from the womb of the earth, from thirsty sands and ocean pits and glued them to her soul with warm blood, hot tears, sweat and sticky hope.. and built herself limb by limb from a faint heart beat, a fading pulse. You can’t because she […]
He raises his eyebrow. Flicks a tear off his sculpted, strikingly beautiful face. Leans forward. Cups his chin. He is not Oprah but we could be wrong. Satyamev Jayate is a well-intentioned show. It has got one thing right. The fact that in a country where we are oblivious to the obvious, a show about […]
A few days back I found a petition forwarded by Richard Loitam’s parents in my inbox. The same Richard who was brutally beaten to death a few nights ago in a reputed Bangalore college. A few months in a college in the capacity of an occasional teacher made me react to this news with far more […]
Sometimes those who watch you go by.. have no idea about your journey the roads you have taken to get here they only see who you are now or think they do and measure your human weight your life your work in the palm of their hand they know nothing because beneath the obvious surface of […]
The roots of a gulmohar.. with hungry, splayed fingers clutch the earth to draw all its passion eager lust crimson joy life blood life surge to pour it all back into a million, flaming hearts beating back to the world unconquerable love that covers the earth with warm, red kisses and fades..leaving behind a promise […]
An unfinished day.. half baked. incomplete. loudly, rudely voiced. untidy. spilling… unconvincing truths.. just like a.. soul expelled from its skin And now just a moment a deep breath and forgiveness and insight that even when you can’t draw a straight line on paper you can in your head and that is where it begins and […]
So how dirty is dirty on Indian television? A censored film is not sanitised enough for family audiences but home grown crime shows are? Especially the ones where in the guise of educating viewers about the dangers lurking in every neighbourhood and dark corner, gang rapes are recreated, victims are shown pleading for mercy as […]
When mind triumphs over matter, you become Zohra Sehgal. How else do you explain that someone born in 1912 is still relevant to us? Still loved, adored and still smiling at life with a wink and a saucy grin after a lifetime of challenges in an age when people far younger and stronger than her […]