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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Winter mornings in Bhopal have for years exuded a certain charm and thinking about them always makes me want to pack my woollens and head home. Memories of chilly mornings dawning upon the city and a bright sun fighting valiantly to keep earthlings energetic and happy are as fresh in my mind as just-baked bread. […]
We drove 645 km, dealt with hours of traffic jams and walked 7 km in the dead of the night to reach Sangam. Enveloped in a cloud of mist with no beginning or end, the air was dense with chants, wails and cacophonic public announcements. We stood stupefied at how the darkest moonless sky had […]
`Trying to remember our way back into past realities, past rooms, past beliefs is a first step towards measuring the depths of change in ourselves and the world. It’s also a reminder that the progress we may now take for granted is the result of many major accomplishments of the past and just the beginning of […]
There will come a time in your life when you might be introduced to the novel idea that it is not just products that reach expiry dates, but people too! I am reaching the 25 year mark very soon and needless to say that leaves some very worried parents wondering if their beautiful daughter will […]
Was it coincidental that I wrote the introduction to the Chicken Soup for the Indian Woman’s Soul on the eve of Woman’s Day? As I wrote it many years ago, I recalled women who have triumphed in big and small ways and changed lives and perceptions without ever being acknowledged. Women who don’t bail out easily […]
A young lady half my age offered to carry my bag. On seeing me recoil, she reached out to grab it and we tugged a bit, my sense of independence rivalling her classy upbringing. She resolved the impasse by insisting her driver see me to the car. ** The second event took place as […]
In the twilight dappled ruins of a crumbling fort, swallows roost; And life goes on Under my toes, the stones burn. It is as if the fire still rages in the underground vaults of Chittorgarh where the beautiful queen Padmini flung herself into the flames 700 years back, along with 1200 other women and […]
Along the western border of Punjab where India ends and Pakistan begins (or the other way, depending upon which side you’re looking from), there lies a stretch of no man’s land, marked off by rusty barbed wire fencing. It hides the scar where a country was once cut into two. Overlooked by the bunkers of […]
Death used to a simple matter some years ago. People died. We gave away their belongings to needy people, framed a photograph and hung it up the wall, sometimes with a garland dangling around it. That was it. Perhaps a shirt or a saree was kept, in remembrance. A watch, probably a ring they wore.Which […]
“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” ― George Orwell, 1984 ** Do we understand this simple fact about terrorism and the state-sponsored terror that counters […]
I should have learnt this lesson earlier in life. But it is one of life’s ironies that most Eureka moments come too late. The next best thing you then want to do is to try and save your children all the pain and hurt and disappointment that go with a lifelong negotiation. It is […]
Little did I anticipate the moving adventure that would follow, when I booked a group birding tour, by Caligo Ventures, five days in Trindiad and four in Tobago. It promised rainforests with Trogons, lodging with hummingbirds, turtles, caves and swamps..We were picked up at the Port of Spain airport by an Asa Wright Center […]