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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Every film loving generation in India has had a definitive Hindi film heroine. Suraiya was possibly India’s first female superstar and was a perfect fit for the cinema of 40s and the 50s that was rich with Urdu poetry and elemental stories of passion and sacrifice. She was the reigning queen of the developing Talkie […]
A pixie with large talking eyes and busy hands weaving butterfly dreams. That is Sreeti Mondol for you. Someone who is definitely, decidedly a gloriously luminescent butterfly, out of her cocoon that many of us spend a lifetime hibernating in. Sreeti is a fount of colour and energy, smiles and chatter and then there are the beads. […]
On 13 November 2012, Omnishambles was named Word of the Year by the Oxford English Dictionary. Omnishambles is a neologism i.e. a newly coined word which is in the process of gaining sociopolitical acceptance; and it can be defined as an all-prevailing disorder or chaos; or a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized […]
There was a bit of Yash Chopra in every one of his heroes. Like some of them he believed in an ever-after. In the integrity of emotion. Whether that emotion was hate etched like a tattoo on a wrist or anger over the betrayal of a father. Or lost love that a poet mourned […]
December 1995, 1300 hours, Somewhere in the Western Sector It’s embarrassing as hell. Captain Manoj Rawat (my newly married husband) and I (his newly wedded wife) are standing (actually, wobbling) on a moving camel cart with big yellow marigold garlands dangling around our necks. The regiment adjutant – a short, slim man – and […]
I started jotting down my prayers in a journal sometime in early July this year. I was intrigued by the maid Aibileen in The Help who wrote down all her prayers in a prayer book. Everyone thought her prayers worked. I read about the same thing in Write it Down, Make it Happen. So I […]
Hurricane Sandy took away many people with it. The pictures of the damage were heart wrenching. One cold December not too long ago we woke up freezing. A freak ice storm had left our town without power. We had to live in a friend’s place and then a hotel for five days until the […]
And this is why I believe that certain meetings, connections are fated. There was really no reason for me to meet Mary Morgan. And yet, it was preordained that I meet her at a time when am becoming a bit disillusioned with the idea of investing in hope, resilience, love, friendship. I did not know […]
Twenty minutes have passed since baggage collection at Swarnabhoomi Airport. So far, no sign of the Bangkok Taxi man who had promised online to take us across Bangkok over the next three days. Mom’s worry lines are deepening. Mamaji (Col Rawat) has acquired the lips-tightly-stretched “they’re all cheats” look. Saransh,10, is sulking since his […]
It is the oldest trick in the world. It is called diminishing by an unfair but convincing comparison. We do it all the time. And for some reason, it is quite the established and accepted ritual. Think back. Did you as a child push unpalatable food down your throat with a parent delivering statistics on […]
“Kuch jamaa nahi!” (Translated in English, the phrase loosely refers to something that was supposed to set but did not. Like an idea that did not firm up. Or curd, that stayed runny.) Ask any advertising professional worth his salt, the true meaning of the client reaction stated above and chances are, he/she would be short […]
In search of the subtle The gross is lost So is the prose, in the search of poetry Trudging up the hill The mountain breeze heals the mind The soul yearns for the peak The body..for earth.. In search of the miraculous The mundane is lost So is the form, in the search of essence […]