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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In the end the bulldozer wins every argument. The war for real estate in India is waged brutally and with precise, cold blooded violence and the builder-politician mafia wins every time because we are not a democracy. We are a country where people like you and me rights only in theory and you just had […]
The great columnist of The Washington Post, Art Buchwald was perhaps, also a clairvoyant man. A tongue-in-cheek piece by him written nearly 30 years ago, in the wake of rising prices in the U.S.A, describes his own foray into grocery shopping with his wife. He has to pass an armed guard, show his I.D. and […]
In the years I lived in India in my parents’ home overlooking the slums, we would see drunken husbands beating up their wives. Girls pulled out of school and sent off to do housework. Polygamous husbands and their impoverished families. I always thought it had something to do with being poor and uneducated. I was […]
I’ve mentioned before, I’m relatively new to Kolkata.. Calcutta. Before coming here, I’ve never had domestic help. Today, I have a cook, a cleaner and someone to look after the little ones. I’m a little spoilt, if truth be told. I’m living an easy life, free to do as I choose. But having this freedom […]
Ever wondered why disaster movies show iconic architectural landmarks crumbling to pieces? Why terrorist attacks target buildings that stand for something more than just brick and mortar? Why September 11 was not just about a terrorist attack but a terrorist attack on the beating heart of New York? Why 26/11 was not just about […]
I wish the world had ended in December 2012. The cause for this pessimism is the recent terrorist attack that hit Nairobi. To sum it up, for those who haven’t been in the loop, militants attacked this plush mall, Westgate, in the heart of the city with bombs, grenades and subsequent firing. The cause? As illogical […]
A lot has been seen and heard about the new anti-domestic violence campaign by the ad agency Taproot India. Their “abused goddesses” ad has been making the rounds in social media websites, social networking sites and has received a lot of coverage in many newspapers and journals in India and around the world. Many newspapers have […]
So Asaram Bapu tried to get off the hook by claiming that the girl in question was mentally unstable. Apparently, so were her family members. Seemingly, this ploy did not work and Asaram Bapu now finds himself behind bars. My question is – for how long ? Do the politicians in India have the spunk […]
I always wondered what would be like to be a boy and to be in a world, where the freedom and choices seemed to be limitless. Where the deadline-free timings left one free to do whatever one wished at all kinds of crazy hours. Where the clothes one wore or […]
Fireworks were exploding over Sultanahmet square in Istanbul, as we strolled back after dinner. It was our last night in Turkey, a country that had thrown quite a few surprises our way, all of them pleasant. The term Turkish delight could be applied to more […]
Just recently, I penned a post about how parents could do their bit against the Rape Culture in raising children to be more sensitive and empathetic. The Chetan Bhagat tweet saga on Twitter was a classic example to the contrary. Mr Bhagat tweeted, “The Rupee is asking, is there no punishment for my rapists ?” […]
Yet another gang rape, yet another spate of protests and furor and now people are busy discussing and arguing whether Mumbai is going the Delhi way. To begin with, where does this question even come from ? Is one city safer than the other ? In India, there have been reports of tourists being gang […]