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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Sanjna Kapoor was about 10 when she shot the horrific church massacre scene with her grandfather Geoffrey Kendal in Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (1978). The film was produced by her father’s production company Film Valas. She also appeared as her mother’s childhood reverie in another family production, 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981). But the biggest ever family […]
Pakistani actor Fawad Khan is quoting playwright David Mamet and citing Brando’s brilliance in the 1951 classic A Streetcar Named Desire, minutes after he has been made to dance to a hit from his debut Hindi film Khoobsurat with Sonam Kapoor. He had danced to the rather inane Ma ka phone aaya, with a […]
Actor, travel buff and photography aficionado Kunal Karan Kapoor has been off TV screens since the second season of his cult show Na Nole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha wrapped up in 2013 but he has been doing what few of his peers do. Take time off from the TRP rat race to travel on […]
Being born an Indian means inheriting a big book of rules, principles and society norms as soon as we are born. We are taught from an early age that our behaviour reflects our family’s reputation and status, to listen and obey is considered a sign of goodness, to compromise and sustain a bad relationship is […]
“Javed bhai, hum Dilli haar gaye hain!” (We have lost Delhi), yells Naseeruddin Shah as a violently bitter sepoy in Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (1978). That scene is hard to forget. As is the fact that it was on the sets of Junoon that Shah first met Ismat Chughtai, one of the bravest literary and […]
Shama Zaidi does not want to talk about her mother Qudsia Zaidi nee Umt-ul-qudoos Abdullah because you do not talk about a lifetime of love and loss over a telephone wire. 2014 is the centenary year of Begum Zaidi, writer, social worker, theatre producer and founder of the Hindustani Theatre in Delhi in 1954. […]
In Bangalore to address the students of Indian Institute of Management, legendary Architect B V Doshi strolls around the campus. As he pauses to make a point, he is framed by a flowering creeper, crests and hollows of green grass and thousands of trees. It is simple to see in this snapshot, the sum of […]
“Murda Paraston ki Duniya” , is perhaps my father’s favourite line. Loosely translated it would mean, “this is a world where the dead are greatly appreciated.” Over the years, I have come to believe that this is in fact true. It’s amazing how an untimely death can propel you to win a posthumous Oscar or […]
A few days after Kishore Kumar’s birth anniversary, the ring tone of his son and singer Amit Kumar echoes a song befitting the occasion, Ye mahfil yun hi sajegi.. ye duniyan yun hi chalegi… jo dhadkan kisi ki ruke tum ruko naa..(The celebrations will continue, the world will go on…if a heartbeat stops somewhere..don’t stop […]
A coal blackened board welcomes us as we drive through ‘Desh ki Koyla Rajdhani – Dhanbad.’ Coal and Capital. Our country’s current obsession. Just a few people shy of complete coverage of human rights issues in all of Jharkhand’s 24 districts, a colleague (at the time snoozing on the back seat) and I were travel-tripping […]
The issue with the casting of Sanjay Leela Bhasali’s grand production Mary Kom is that it does not reflect what Mary Kom stands for. Does Priyanka look like Mary Kom? No, she looks like Priyanka Chopra with an accentuated pout and a lot of muscle. Do we need a North-Eastern face to play a North-Eastern […]
Sometime around 1973, author Shashi Deshpande lived in the campus of the KEM Hospital in Mumbai and would often see a young, sprightly nurse pass by. Sometime later, she learnt that this young woman was Aruna Shanbaug. And that all the promise of her life had been snatched away by a ward boy who […]