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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The cherry blossom-laden mind, Sways to the music, Of the, nonchalant wind, Painted in dreams, hopes, Of memories left behind, A few petals disembark, into realms wistful, A few soar, Some plummet, Others open their dewy eyes, Blush in sunshine, Gone, are the dreary winter mornings, Gone is the mist, The darkness, Once seemingly unending, So now we smile unafraid, And […]
The media is constantly bombarding us with images: billboards, commercials, films, sitcoms- all of which have a huge impact on the way we think, feel and talk about society. Among the millions of messages the mainstream media sends us every day- a particularly damaging one is of the representation of gender roles. Regressive, damaging stereotypes […]
A click, a tap, at best a double tap! That’s all it takes to “like” someone else – their picture, their thoughts, their activities, their moments. So easy. Just click, tap, liked! Ever tried that for yourself? Okay now, I don’t mean upload a pic and like it yourself. That is kind of weird I’ll […]
“Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” If you’ve ever been in a car or on a bike, owned one, rented one, seen one and most importantly noticed one, you know where to find those words! On the rear-view mirror or side-view mirror of course! It’s that mirror, which helps you gauge which […]
For some afternoons now, I have been listening to the Azaan. Its hauntingly beautiful melody floats over the houses, slips through the lanes to reach me. I don’t really know where it comes from; it doesn’t sound very near. But sound has a way of getting through. The muezzin seems to put all the power of his meditation into […]
”There was never anything wrong with keeping up a little optimism over the flood.” That line from Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter arrested my attention when I was reading the book by candlelight a week ago. It was a dark week in many senses. My beloved city was flooded, making thousands of people homeless. […]
The rain had stopped being furious. But, the motorists were murderous with their grumbling vehicles and grumpy faces. On any other day, I would have joined their never-ending serpentine queue. But that day, with a sinister smile on my face, I dodged the gridlocks, and reached home without complaining. Because, the bicycle is one of […]
In my home in Patiala, I had designed a little wall ornament with painted cherries and a quote, ”Enough is as good as a feast.” That statement comes back to me at the end of each year when I take stock of not what I earned but what I learned over a span of 365 days. […]
How does one explain evil? Paris? Syria? The tragedy of a refugee who is now a non-person in the absence of a home, a geographical, historical, personal reference point? Who has seen a missile tear into his home, his wife, his daughter and who now has to start again with what remains in a country […]
As I wait for the city to limp back to life between power cuts, internet troubles and cell phones with no signal, I feel like I have been stripped down to the bare minimum. No more escaping reality by drowning oneself in technology. Suddenly there is too much free time and too many people around […]
Being a student of Women’s Studies can be extremely frustrating- everything you thought you believed in is deconstructed and you feel guilty every time you sing along to Honey Singh (yes, I know the words of Chaar Botal Vodka). You feel guilty every time you enjoy pretty much any Bollywood film. You realize that Shah Rukh […]
I have always been proud of the fact that my family embraced different cultures and religions with equal love and joy. My father is a Hindu Rajput from Gharwal, Uttrakhand and my mother a Muslim from Srinagar, Kashmir. They fell in love in the 80’s and got married after a little resistance from some of […]