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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I dreamt of many young girls who looked exactly like each other. All wearing purple. All playing , holding hands and perhaps singing on the roof of a Sufi dargah. The sky had birds, pigeons if I recall correctly. My dreams bring me peace when life can’t. I can’t even meet her eyes in that picture […]
I can’t get this image out of my head. A young survivor of the latest mass shooting in the US, clinging to a parent, with a Valentine’s Day balloon clutched in the hand. And yet another image. Of screaming children raising their hands in the air as a SWAT team breaks into an auditorium. And one […]
From the time I saw Sahabzade Irrfan Ali Khan playing Makhdoom Mohiuddin in the DD series Kehkashan in the 90s, and singing, “Ishq ke sholon ko bhadkao ki kuch raat kate ” , I have believed that we have done him injustice by limiting his profile to a histrionics heavy actor. His eyes and silences are […]
Those who remember the 2015 season of MasterChef Australia may remember an imperturbable Billie McKay nailing a perversely difficult sugar globe in the finale to land not just the title, the prize money and lifelong stardom but the chance to work alongside Heston Blumenthal in his iconic Fat Duck restaurant in London. Once there, she retreated from limelight to […]
The most interesting thing about Imtiaz Ali’s Jab Harry Met Sejal is Shah Rukh Khan and the reimagining of Raj, the lover who knew he could not fail at life or love. The film shows us what would have happened if Raj had lost Simran after that fateful train journey through Europe and shrunk into […]
The generation of women that came before mine had a different view by and large of what abuse and violation represented. I remember being told many versions of “apni izzat apne haath mein hoti hai” (your honour is in your hands) while growing up and in my twenties by women who could not understand why I […]
“Everything is fair in love and war,” says Rajkumar Rao’s vindictive hero in the viral trailer for Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aaana. This could have been the tagline of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati. The difference is that in the first film, the hero is avenging himself by punishing the woman who broke his heart. He wants […]
It was the afternoon of September 16, 2015 and I was in the lounge of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, sitting next to a childhood memory. We had just finished a long chat and I was feeling what I always feel when am in the presence of pure authenticity, unpretentious goodness and for the lack […]
Actor-director Rajat Kapoor contradicts the cliches of fame without saying a word.The three time National Award winner’s body of work speaks for him and also for his need to create content that does not necessarily conform to commercial stipulations. It is easy to see why in a star-driven business, it would be tough for an independent […]
A girl in a burkha (Plabita Borthakur in her breakout role as Rihanna) in search of a stairway to heaven and a Led Zeppelin high, wearing her real self like a shade of red on her lips, and then wiping it off to disappear into the dungeon like tailoring shop of her father where at the […]
The blood they shed in your name in my name in our name runs in the veins of this country as the music of Baba Allauddin Abdul Kareem Khan saheb Amir Khusrau Ustad Amir Khan Begum Akhtar Ustad Bismillah Khan and so many who sang of Ram and Allah of your heart, my spirit […]
She plants lavender bushes on arid earth and keeps the soil moist, welcoming and fertile for thirsty seedlings. She is like the trees sheltering. And like the gardener nurturing. She knows the words the silences. Her hands build heal becalm soothe revive and remain invisible because she likes fading into serene margins. To never claim […]