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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That love you are Looking for, Perfect and glorious, A man, a woman To justify your existence, Isn’t coming, and if they do, There is no guarantee That they will remain Who they are now, Perfect and glorious After they meet you. It’s not saying anything At all About who you are. But love is […]
Your tears have dried up Against your cheeks, Leaving crusted-over, salty pathways, Like oceans gone dry And you have cried well into the night For a now that no longer exists Now. The lines fall out of your palms, Now, As you fly into this perfect moment, Did you know, Everything is possible And in […]
There are several noises in her head. Years ago, they used to disturb her. The sound of mankind in turmoil. The painful grunts of voices that were never sure. The panting arguments of minds that had heard themselves over and over again too often . Not any more, though. There was no need to justify […]
Sorrow can be solid; you can feel it thumping, knocking the air out of your lungs, rendering you incapable of drawing breath, air inches away but so still, you cannot suck it in. A thousand thoughts rush through your brain and rush into your veins, pushing your blood harder and harder until you feel that […]
She has been sitting on that parapet wall for an hour now. She gazes out at a landscape that isn’t exactly a great view but it is a view to her nevertheless. There is a wide open ground. At the very far end of that ground, she sees a few shanties where labourers live and […]
This is not a regular thepla recipe. For one, it has no besan. And you cannot ‘see’ the methi. And there are more masalas in this as against the regular theplas. And they have a bit of a bite because of a secret ingredient. AND….and these are a cross between parathas and phulkas. Why are […]
This is not exactly a Holi recipe but will happily star in a spicy, authentic menu on the festival day and will win many palates with its mouth-watering, flavourful goodness. The world is abundant with different types of Kadhis. There’s Punjabi Kadhi, there’s Gujarati Kadhi, Sindi Kadhi, even Rajasthani Kadhi. There are different names too, […]
A-walking, a-humming, The road stretches on, Your twenty-dollar bill, Crumbling in your fingers, Whistling a concerto, You heard long ago, Playing in a dream, Or playing in your head, How does it matter When you won’t ever be dead? Down to your last penny, And you throw it away On a man who says He […]
One of the most important lessons I learnt in life happened when I was least expecting it to spring itself upon me. I sat as part of a large audience, listening to the speaker, who was a charming young man, and speaking a lot of sense. He spoke about drugs, he spoke about sex, he […]
Surprisingly, a lot of writing happens when the senses skid into a realisation that sinks into the innermost layers of the self. And a bit of writing also happens when the self stretches itself and brushes accidentally or intentionally, into a truth it always knew but seemed to have forgotten. You, who told me suddenly, […]
Better known in Bengali as Kaanch (nasal twang there, meaning raw) Kolaar (Kaw-Laar, meaning- ‘of banana’) Daalna (I have no idea what this means in any other language so let’s play safe and call it curry, okay?). I remember mum making this a few times. Of course, we wanted more, and we never managed to […]
Today, I want to write about something comforting, familiar, something that smells like my mom’s kitchen. This one is called the Dalna. These are no onion no garlic recipes, always curries, always eaten with rice and always made on days when the Bongs decide to stay away from meat, mostly a Saturday or sometimes a […]