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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Vehmon gumaan se duur duur… Yakeen ki hadd ke paas paas… Dil ko bharam yeh ho gaya… Unko humse pyaar hai.. Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan framed by gregariously nodding yellow tulips. And a universal hope encased in the above lines. And romance as if it was a precious pearl preserved in a velvet lined jewel box. […]
There is no particular reason to remember Hrishikesh Mukherjee today but in the context of nostalgia, of remembering how we were, how simple our cinema was, how moving, how heart-felt, how innocent, his is the first name that one remembers. The best tribute to Hrishikesh Mukherjee would be to smile in gentle recollection. His cinema was […]
Heard of the itch that must be scratched? Indians have many such itches. Cricket. Politics. Films. Film stars. Views on religion. Food. Sentiments. To name a few, serious! But across all the languages we speak in this country, officially or unofficially, the language of cinema is loved like no other. We take our movies very seriously, […]
She wears altered waist coats of her politician father, swaps jhumkas for a gun, dances raunchily in front of her grandmother, is Tendulkar to her brothers, swears and rains abuses with passion on foes, drives an open jeep, is not afraid of anything or anyone between the heaven up there and the hell that Almore […]
I am just back from the movie Ishaqzaade. On the face of it, a usual and regular outing for us empty nesters. But this particular viewing turned out to be a very different experience. For one, we chose to go to Delite Diamond on Aruna Asif Ali Road to watch this flick. It is a very different world […]
Difficult to say sperm (or sparm – as the good Doctor Chadda (Annu Kapoor in an err.. seminal performance) pronounces it), without the mind travelling to where it comes from. All right, I picked up that line somewhere. Yet, here is an entire movie from Bollywood that revolves around the word without making you go queasy […]
He raises his eyebrow. Flicks a tear off his sculpted, strikingly beautiful face. Leans forward. Cups his chin. He is not Oprah but we could be wrong. Satyamev Jayate is a well-intentioned show. It has got one thing right. The fact that in a country where we are oblivious to the obvious, a show about […]
So how dirty is dirty on Indian television? A censored film is not sanitised enough for family audiences but home grown crime shows are? Especially the ones where in the guise of educating viewers about the dangers lurking in every neighbourhood and dark corner, gang rapes are recreated, victims are shown pleading for mercy as […]
When mind triumphs over matter, you become Zohra Sehgal. How else do you explain that someone born in 1912 is still relevant to us? Still loved, adored and still smiling at life with a wink and a saucy grin after a lifetime of challenges in an age when people far younger and stronger than her […]
Watching Naseeruddin Shah as an exploitative superstar in The Dirty Picture may have reminded you once again of the many faces and skins and voices and bodies he inhabits as an actor. The film also made me recall some encounters I have had with the actor who never says the typical things, and never bothers […]
This is one of the most memorable interviews I did..and primarily because the actor in question was just herself and unaffected to the core. Though dated, the piece showcases a remarkable woman and a gifted performer. You know, you are in the presence of a real actor when she walks into a room and suddenly […]
“Aajkal kisi ko wo toktaa nahin, chaahe kuchh bhi kijiye roktaa nahin ho rahi hai loot maar phat rahe hain bam aasmaan pe hai Khudaa aur zameen pe ham aajkal wo is taraf dekhtaa hai kam” (God no longer chides anyone No matter what we do..He just watches on.. all the mayhem..all the bomb blasts.. […]