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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Somewhere in my neighbourhood, a house owns a grandfather chiming clock. I imagine it must also have a pendulum, because in the quietness of 1400 hours every day, I can bet I hear a swish-swish in the air, like metal ripping gently through the wind, the pendulum swinging back and forth, marking time, time that […]
Until we cross over to the other side, we all belong to that lost group of people that are looking for real love. The heart-wrenching, gut-moving, mind-numbing sense of true belonging, perhaps not unconditional, like the Creator has for the Created, but close nevertheless. The kind that wants to live forever because you found the […]
Nothing he did made her happy. There always was something that could be corrected, improved, tweaked, changed, worked upon. Nothing was perfect…of course, perfect was not a possibility and everybody had a different definition of perfection. But he tried. Every time. Every day. 40 years hence, she knew he would never come close to what […]
You could have been a king. Won riches, land, commanded battalions and harems. You could have been the warrior queen who ended a war. You could have been the President of a nation and led your country to glory. You could have been an artist and graced homes, museums and galleries. You could have been an actor and led […]
I was once walking by a promenade. Which was, as happens in every fairytale, flanked by green trees swaying madly and raining leaves on me. It was perfect you know. The breeze, the sounds of the birds, the whooshing of the wind in my ears, the way a dog scampered across the walk, the cycle […]
It used to irritate her. He would leave the chairs pushed too far back in, making the whole dining table symmetry skewed. He would leave the patio chairs pulled too far out. He would leave wet towels on wooden chairs.And he would also close taps too tightly. Often she would correct these things quietly. Sometimes she would […]
The leaves have fallen and will be replaced soon by greener ones. Newer ones. Fresher ones. If it’s the end of a cycle for you too, doing these things will add to how much you believe in getting a new bark.. – Get a new hair cut. A style you have never done before. It […]
The stench hits you hard when you first enter it. If a deep dark murky brown and black and yellow could reek, it would probably smell like that. Not like the benign Metro of Delhi and Kolkata, steel glinting under incandescent white lights, the high-pitched cry of the train roaring through underground tunnels, the deep […]
Once in every while, you should remember the things you did and liked long, long ago. When you were younger than you are now. I remember how my first nail colour was a shade of lavender with glitter. And then a shade of blue with little sparkly stars inside. 10 years hence, when I see […]
Love is never a constant. Especially human love. There is nothing you can count on. There is nobody that will stay. The lips that pursed up with anger and impatience, bordering on hatred and malice yesterday may as well kiss you today. What must you feel? Yesterday’s agony or today’s joy? Do not wallow, though. […]
I am obsessed about this country. I love it to the point of hating it and then tumbling back into loving it all over again. I hate the callousness. The chuck-a-plastic-wrapper-outta-the-window attitude. I hate people spitting all over the place. Wonder if they would spit on their dining table. I hate the chalta-hai (anything goes) […]
I have not written a movie review in a long time. I watch movies selectively. I do my research on the story, on the conclusion and then decide to expose my senses to this massively powerful medium of absorption. There is enough conditioning in the human mind without me deliberately exposing it to the unnecessary, […]