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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There is an undeniable joy of digging into the sourness of mom’s pickles, or opening up a cookie box that instantly hauls you away to grandma’s kitchen. Their old aprons splattered with bits of food. Their warm hands feeding you love and leaving you full, with not just a buttery goodness, but also a lifetime […]
These walls used to be lined with books. Now they hold imprints of a different kind. History was made here that day, and people unmade, in fire, in smoke, in blood and sticky gore. ** In the stillness of the empty room, you can still feel the heat, hear the hopeless cries, the sense of […]
I loved The Casual Vacancy. What a decimation of British smalltown culture, with their petty concerns, their sad sex lives and their young and aimless. Rowling says it all ‘authentically’, never mind whose point of view she is working from. I don’t know many writers who can delve into the workings of an obese old […]
At this point, the history of the EWS colony in Ejipura is a haze. A dust haze, under fierce sunshine as bulldozers plow away the last bits and pieces of the homes of more than 200 families. Fragments swim into focus now and then. ** The corporation-built housing blocks that were so shoddy they became […]
There are so many versions of him. The Salman Rushdie present at Bangalore’s Taj West End tonight however was someone tangible. Someone who with great ease settled in an uncomfortable chair on the podium, not aware or maybe aware of the discreet logistics and forbidding security measures that had finally made his presence possible in […]
Health defies definition. Modern medical science cannot sum up what health is; only this much is said: absence of disease is health. It is like defining a flower in relation to thorns. Why is health not defined? Because health comes from the innermost being of an individual. The Hindi word Swasthya means rooted in the innermost being. […]
Walking into Pizza Metro Pizza, felt like crossing a threshold of time. One step inside, and I was instantly transported to Italy. To my left was a vibrant mural of a busy, colourful Naples market, reminiscent of an Italy I only saw in films. The other walls were dotted with frames of Italy’s most popular comedian […]
The first time I read Rebecca I fell in love with the book. The haunting, sometimes thrilling, often heart wrenching novel by Daphne Du Maurier made me an instant fan of the author and I have ever since recommended the book to many people. However the other day I saw a cinematic adaptation of the […]
Dear Stranger, I have never met you. I don’t know your name. I have not even seen any pictures of yours. All I know is that you became a part of my consciousness on a cold December day in a foreign land. When I read about the violence perpetuated on you, my stomach turned […]
It’s that time of the year once again when we catch up with television celebs who brought into our bedrooms the most unbearable rubbish. Guys and gals, you nearly killed us when we went banging our heads against our television screens. For that you get some new year resolution suggestions that might make us like […]
Even if the rapist had broken through the door and raped someone in the house, the woman victim would have been at fault. At least partially, because “taali ek hath se nahi bajti…” If the rape victim was an infant perhaps the reason would be her parent’s non- belief in god or perhaps her stars […]
The rape and murder of the young 23- year- old in New Delhi on December 16, 2012, has unleashed the suppressed angst of millions of men and women in India and has led to endless debates and discussions across all media, which are not going to finish too soon, but will die down nonetheless, over time.Meanwhile, rapes, […]