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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I feel woolly in the head, often. It’s a light, airy feeling, of a benevolent happy detachment, if pushed to analyse. Those are silent, reflective moments I break free in, to float away from the immediate so I can observe the circus in action, all around. I watch the cast, you and me and those […]
Was it yesterday that I beamed at the fact that I had turned 18? I remember standing in one of the corridors of Seshadripuram College huddled with my friends, celebrating a milestone that added an extra zing to the already raging estrogen. I was 18. Yes. 18. Always wanted to be since I was a […]
She always wondered how she would find him in the next lifetime. Because, obviously, she would not want to be with anybody else. He wondered why she was always in a hurry. He would set out to meet her and always find her halfway through, complaining that he never came first. She wondered why he never […]
To me.. small things are big a kernel is a tree already a tree..is a meadow a meadow..is spring and spring..all of life and everything is just one thing that path strewn with yellow flowers the roof top baking in the sun red chillies on carts dogs by the roadside cats on window sills that lake […]
I am the child of the seventies. Childhood entertainment consisted of movies and Sunday trips to children’s park. Our eating out was made up of the occasional softie in Civil Lines after the matinee or a rolled newspaper cone of murmura and matar at the park, where our favourite plaything was the concrete elephant you […]
I promised myself that I would never write about Baby Falak or Baby Afreen. To write farewell notes to battered to death babies is such an inadequate response. We feel sorry, revolted, angry, maybe shed a tear or two. Write sentimental or passionate elegies and we go back to our lives and our realities. And […]
Bridges are spaces. Bridges are places, where people meet other people, enjoy their surroundings, and experience being part of a community. Though a mode of transit, bridges can be magnets for public activity and fun. Bridges not only connect land to land, but also have an impact on adjacent parks, industries and residential communities, and […]
Summer vacations had finally begun and 15- year- old Mala was glad to be one of the lucky ones in her group of friends who would be escaping the sordid Bhopal heat. Her parents had finally decided to take the long overdue vacation to Bangalore and they were all set to spend a glorious summer […]
My grandmother lived by one abiding dictum, “Daughters must never be left alone anywhere, overnight.” She was obsessive about Mom’s friends and rationed her rare friendly visits to the last minute. In fact, she is known to have chucked a pair of scissors at her once, over a five minutes delay, returning home from a […]
Images fly by. Trees and dogs, cows in alleyways, people. We catch familiar expressions…disgust at highly priced onions , the sly smile of a pickpocket, the anger in a girl’s eyes at the man who just leered at her, anxiety in the man’s as he waits for the daughter to cross the road and reach […]
The winds carry you. To places far and not known yet. Where you will breathe the air I have not yet touched. Or have I? Where you will see sights I have not yet seen. Sounds I have not heard yet, and smells I have not breathed in. You will be away and you will […]
It is frail. It falters and stumbles and we still spend our lives chasing it and feeling the compulsive need to acquire it. To have it in our lives. To want it, to live it. Many crimes are committed in its name, many lives lost, many sacrifices made, many sorrows lived. And yet, when we […]