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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One Wednesday morning, as I dashed towards the elevator to leave for office, I was already too late. The elevator had just one other occupant. A short, fair and beautiful young woman with a glittering bindi. She smiled at me and I returned the favour and tried to recall where I had seen her last and then it occurred to […]
Imagine this: You’re at a party with a bunch of your friends. You’re a little buzzed. Eventually the music dies down and you all end up crashing at your friend’s house. You wake up the next morning and you know something’s not quite right. Something happened but you’re not ready to talk about it. You […]
Forty five. I just turned forty five today. That number is considered by many as exactly halfway through life. And I did stop and reflect about how I feel, having reached that milestone. It feels no different, truth be told. Life, so far, has been a very interesting journey – a very agreeable, equitable one. […]
“As the picture of the drowned Syrian boy went viral, the emotional outpourings on social media left me somewhat cold,” so says an article in an online magazine, trying to convey that though the death of the young child, (clad fetchingly, it says, in a red T-shirt and blue jeans) was tragic, it showed […]
“The girl looks alright, is a classical dancer preparing for her first stage performance, works as a teacher, earns a decent salary. When she met us she said she would continue performing on stage if the extended family permits else would give up dancing. She also said that after marriage she would continue to […]
Can’t drive, don’t have a job and hanging on to the last shred of sanity. That pretty much describes my situation today. And I’ve been there before – in some other place, at some other time in my life. And it is a scary place to be. What’s even scarier is the belief that you […]
Fifty years is not a short period of time. From a 12-year-young girl, I have turned into a 62-years-old woman. But the memories of those summer days that made the young mind wonder what was happening around us and why there had been so many changes made in our daily routine, are still so fresh. […]
We have been here before but let us do a body count, once again.Safdar Hashmi is a distant memory, so he does not count. He was murdered In 1989, while performing a street play. Rationalist Dr. Narendra Dabholkar (65) was shot dead near Pune’s Shanivar Peth area in 2013. Not too long ago, anti-toll campaigner […]
“I was never a dancer, never a gymnast, never naturally peaceful, patient or confident. I generally felt socially awkward, private, introverted, comfortable reading and studying but not talking, sharing. I never ever felt beautiful or elegant, always felt like the small girl in the corner. Then one day after many years of Yoga practice, I […]
Dad always says, “Murda-parasto ki duniya” (the world only appreciates the dead).India mourned a very significant loss sometime back, that of Dr. Abdul Kalaam Azad (APJ), scientist, former President and a great teacher. I read the news while I was scrolling through my phone in a movie (I do that to escape the boring […]
Now before you start judging a book by its cover, no this piece has got nothing to do with staying fit and healthy. Not in the physical sense of the word at least. Its got to do with mental health or peace; with fitting-in, be it with a group of friends or in an organisation. Somehow […]
Remember when the two of you used to be best friends, and couldn’t wait to tell each other stuff. Maybe not everything, but the important stuff or the funny stuff or the heart breaking stuff. And now, you see each other, node politely, exchange a kind word or two, promise to catch up and […]