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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Jaspal Bhatti was more of a crusader than a comedian, who through his simple, clean, genial and understated humour won millions of hearts through decades. With much ease, freshness and simplicity, Bhatti’s realistic characters, caught in everyday situations, were identifiable and made instant connect. Utilizing comedy as a tool of satire had been his […]
Jab Tak Hai Jaan..a prophetic title in retrospect. Perfect for a man who worked till the last year of his life with the medium that he loved, and had shaped and redefined. Call it a coincidence but for some reason, I started watching my favourite Yash Chopra films in the past one week and marvelled […]
I remember Sridevi only for a few signature moments. Her swirl in a shower of flower petals in Chandni. Her single-minded adoration for an older man in Lamhe. That face that could mirror any emotion, any thought in a trice. Those limbs that made music whenever they moved to music. There is an ironical moment […]
At a recent event, I was meant to give a talk on “Mumbai and the power of collective conscience”. I went prepared for the speech, but the unimaginable happened.Something that has never happened to me before. The moment my turn came, and I stepped on to the stage to speak, I blanked out and lost complete […]
Anurag Basu’s Barfi, India’s official entry to the Oscars has achieved nothing new, The controversy in the wake of its selection has been as old as the questions about just what guides our cinema juries to select films for a foreign forum. Was an epic mess called Jeans, a Vijay Amritraj’s production, chosen because of Amritraj’s […]
In the 70s and the 80s, cinema was an Eastman colour, 70 mm or cinema-scope as the case may be, ‘cannot bear to miss a scene’ event. And if you have not watched Trishul and Deewar or Kala Patthar or Sholay in a cinema hall, you will never know what it was like to be in the heart of […]
On October 10, 1964, the whole nation was shocked to hear about the sudden and tragic death of the great stalwart of Hindi cinema Guru Dutt. Not only because he was a great film director, producer and actor; but because he was only 39 years old. His fame was defined by four films Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke […]
Tragedy does not respect fame or talent or abundance. It strikes with cold precision and takes away what it must. And also destroys the notion that the rich and the successful are impervious to loss. The suicide of writer Varsha Bhosle, is a blow not just because it is such a shocking tragedy but also because […]
In Hindi cinema, physical and mental challenges are treated usually like plot twists and not really in the context of everyday issues that the differently-abled deal with. And most of the time, the details are sketchy. In Anurag Basu’s Barfi, Autism has been represented like a difficult childhood that has overstayed while an adult […]
Sometime in the 90s, a film impacted Indian television almost irrevocably. Sooraj Barjatya’s Hum Aapke Hain Kaun with its success, established a certain formulaic, almost slavish dependence on certain images, ideas and belief systems. Sweeping, glinting staircases in homes that were more Plaster-of-Paris than brick and mortar and characters that were more cliched […]
“Main keh raha hoon, main keh raha hoon, main keh raha hoon!” Everytime I watch a wannabe film on adult relationships..I remember this Kulbhushan Kharbanda (he is on the phone with his neurotic actress girl friend who wants to know if he has broken the news of their affair to his wife) dialogue from […]
Yes Mubarak Begum is around. And no, she isn’t doing well. I know no one asked but it’s one of those moments in life when a question need not precede the answer. A few years ago, a dusty drive to Behram Baug in Jogeshwari took a colleague and me to the one room tenement […]