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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This is a sappy, mushy, gooey post. Quite unlike me, but hey, I haven’t been a mother for that long. Give me time and my inner gushing self will emerge from the closet. When Ankita was first placed in my arms, I felt nothing. I waited and waited for thunderstorms and lightening but nothing happened. […]
In the small hill town of Kotdwar in Pauri Garhwal, this is the fortnight of the cross-dressers. This is the only season in these lazy hills, known for their laid-back men and hard-working women with alabaster complexions and frown-lined foreheads (you can well understand why), that the bhullus and the bhaijis (younger and elder brothers) […]
Sugo was a tall, thin, very dark, really scrawny, bat-eared guy of about 15. He had large horn-rimmed glasses, a sullen expression and round, bulbous eyes. Now any one would think from my description that he was an extremely unattractive chap, but not really, he was just at that stage in life when guys don’t […]
Good Sadhu Babas should never be as you expect them to be and Rocket Baba is no exception. Though over 70, he has the body of a fit 30-year-old, his skin and eyes are clear and his voice just booms. He arrives at the house of his student, my rakhi brother Gopal, like an angry […]
Uma Iyer has dreamt of Molu, a mischievous six-year-old for almost a decade now. She shares with the young readers of Unboxed Writers, ‘Meet Molu,’ a yet to be published first book of hopefully what would turn out to be a Molu and Tushka series. Agni, or ‘Molu’ as she is commonly referred to, is a six-year-old girl […]
Ok, so the nanny is having an affair. There are too many phone calls, sweet whispers into the night and generally a haze of happiness surrounding her. The calls and messages history are deleted everyday and the phones, in fact two of them, one given by me and one hers, are kept hidden from sight. […]
I am a bonafide art writer. And yet, not being visible on the Page 3 circuit of art openings can sometimes become a huge embarrassment. As it did recently when I landed at a fancy art opening at a seven star hotel accompanied by a male friend and was asked a few unpleasant questions. “So […]
“I think I am in love,” announced A as she plonked herself on B’s settee. “You think too much sweetheart…,” said an indulgent B. “I think this time round it is the real thing.” “You are always sure it is the real thing dear, remember X, and Y …and Z for that matter?” “X was […]
“Hello, it’s Diana this side.” This side of WHAT you may ask? “This side of the phone!” When my office boy decided to drive me insane with his efficient inefficiency, one of his tactics was to wait until I had finished giving him instructions at his desk and had walked into my own […]
A hitherto undiscovered (by the outside world) dialect is in use in the Mumbai local trains. Everybody knows what Bambaiya is all about. The patli-galli, futle routine has been featured time and again in endless Bollywood sagas. But this ‘local language’ is still an enigma. Let me try and explain the intricacies. The first […]
There is something quite charming about the Indian use of English, something quite contagious about the wonderful Hinglish used in India that is something between Hindi and English. Before I entered into the Office English of India, I was content to muddle along in India speaking a mix of English, Hindi, hand signals and head […]
Some books live up to their authors. But very few authors live up to their books. In an industry packed with more ambition than talent, writers have unwillingly or enthusiastically embraced the fact that they and not just just their books have to be branded and marketed. At a time when writing is becoming a vanity exercise fuelled by the need to […]