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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Mehdi Hassan’s voice was not the voice of populism. His was the voice of riyaz, of uncompromised passion and excellence..the kind you cannot stumble by but have to earn through years of application, commitment and diligence. This voice was not an easy voice to fall in love with, You needed to be all there..ear, mind, […]
Standing there, ankle deep in water with cool breeze caressing my cheeks I felt myself shiver It has been days, probably weeks It is time, I realised with a sigh to be something more than a beautiful dreamer Yes, it is time to try to rewrite the fate of a lone sailor Questions exploded in […]
Facing the challenges in life is simple. There is no magic involved. There is no hidden agenda to be discovered. There is no secret ingredient to be added. There is no super power to be awakened. All it takes is a little more time. A little more thought. A little more persistence. A little more […]
Whatever it is that creates.. makes those grand gestures of flamboyant sunsets and a never before..never again sunrise *** star pepper moon ballet perfectly arched astutely timed rainbows *** and small gestures that we almost miss raindrops on lotus leaves like well picked pearls on an open palm reflecting light colour all of life everything […]
Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that driving across a frozen mountain pass at 13,714 feet, one cold, grey afternoon, I would come face to face with a young soldier. Who would teach me a lesson for life. That a soldier doesn’t die when a bullet whips into his head, piercing his woolen […]
Ahem, what do Orwell and Darwin have in common? (Some people may ask) Well, this is actually about how those two geniuses can be so different and yet lead to the same dictum. Darwin led the revolution in scientific thinking about how all the diversity in nature was the product of “natural selection” and Orwell […]
We all look in the mirror each day. Maybe more than once. Admire ourselves or even flinch at what we see sometimes. But have you ever wondered what your soul would look like in the mirror? I used to. A lot! Till a day, I came across this guy. He was neither an acquaintance nor […]
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, […]
The air is still. Almost as if it has decided to see just how quietly it can creep, undetected, through her home. Not a leaf has moved. Not a sigh has escaped her lips. Not a word of this article she has read has stayed back except one: raped. The images swirl in her head. […]
Barbara Epstein calls reviewing a special skill. In India unfortunately, no skill seems to be necessary. Anyone, just about anyone, it seems, can do a review of any book, any author, any genre. To quote Doris Lessing: ` … a young man or woman, reviewer or critic, who has not read more of a writer’s work […]