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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“So what did you get from Kashmir? Pashmeena shawls, saffron, carpets, walnut wood articles?” asked an inquisitive neighbor. “Er…cricket bats,” I replied. She responded with a huge pause. And then I put the receiver away from my ears. “Cricket bats! Who on earth gets cricket bats from Kashmir? Why on earth will one get a […]
How does one write about… Beauty and its many lovers, like an infatuation. Like a shrine, its devotees. Like an ancestral home that belongs to many, yet none. How does one write about… Snow, melting our senses as we gaze at her humility, her presence as ephemeral as laughter. Her impeccably white robe spreading like […]
Hope is always colourful. It has the warmth – the red, orange, and yellow of the rising sun. It lifts your spirit. It tells you that there is a road out there waiting for you to be walked upon. As the streets explode with the various hues of the Gulmohar flowers, ever so beautiful even in passing and […]
Once upon a time, there lived an old farmer Fusao, with his wife Fuyumi, and son Daichi in a small village in Japan. Daichi loved to write. However, he feared he would not be considered as part of the family if he did not keep up with the family occupation and tradition of becoming a […]
She was the rocks that embraced the oceans. Like lovers holding on to one another. Like rain water holds onto earth and like the earth that holds it back – love evident from the fragrance. She’s bosomed many a love; watched them grow, seen them bloom. And she looks spectacular, like spring the flamboyance of […]
Every morning we rushed to the sink To brush our teeth and wash our face And as we turned on the tap There was no water To even wet our finger tips But Ma stood there and smiled as she said, “Let’s make water from water, So we don’t fall short, When the taps run […]
Here’s a scene from a restaurant I’d recently been to. Two men entered the restaurant one after the other. Didn’t seem like they had come together but they sat at the same table, facing each other. And soon they started chatting. Exchanging notes. Smiling, laughing. They even got animated and frowned at times. It was […]
This is how all my mornings begin. Not with a “good morning Mama”, not with a hug and a kiss but a request – “read this? Please!” And I am solely to blame. For I have been reading stories to my son since he was two months old and today, at two years, he reads […]
The bell tolls It’s five and he arrives, with his modest cart packed with savouries. Just a whiff threatening to knock out the senses. The ingredients neatly stacked under glass panels fixed on three sides of the cart – windows to a tangy world. Then come the leak-proof cones crafted from discarded glossy magazine papers […]
She rings the doorbell, one hand balancing a big tokri of vessels and a shoulder weighed down by cast off clothes. “Get those old clothes we sorted,” shouts Ma as she chats up the woman. She’s dressed like the sun. Bright yellow dupatta sprinkled with orange spots. The blouse and skirt like the blue sky; […]
This is no fairy tale even though I married my long time girlfriend, Moon. We had been courting for aeons, literally. People spoke about how Moon and I disappeared behind the clouds at times. News about our celestial love affair spread as far and wide as Pluto. And you know how it is – can’t stop those […]
To twist the famous song by Queen slightly, another book bites the dust and is being banned from production and circulation in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. Yes, we are talking about Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India by award winning author Joseph Lelyveld. And why has this happened? Well, according […]