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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It’s architect, planner, activist and theoretician Charles Correa himself on the stage of the JN Tata Auditorium in Bengaluru and what he once said about Corbusier’s architecture in Chandigarh, comes to mind, “Corbusier has sought to create an architecture of passion. No sotto-voce, no politeness but like Wagner-thunder in the concert hall.” * Correa’s voice is weak and broken but […]
On November 19, Men’s Day was celebrated across the world and promotional videos by consumer companies tried to remind us of the men we could always count on in our lives.Coincidentally, in the season finale of Satyamev Jayate, various participants debated the meaning of a ‘good man’ and how misunderstood the idea of masculinity was in […]
A single powerful thought can change the course of a life. Or many. Who would have imagined that 14,800 cancer patients would receive critical palliative care over 20 years only because in 1992, Kishore Rao, General Manager of Madura Coats, took early retirement to initiate the Karnataka Chapter of the Indian Cancer Society? The momentous […]
In the opening credits of MS Sathyu’s Garm Hava, you hear Kaifi Azmi’s lament, “Taksim hua mulk toh dil ho gaye tukde; Har seene mein toofan, wahan bhi tha yahan bhi Har ghar mein chita jalti thi, lahraate the sholay; har shahar mein shamshan, wahan bhi tha yahan bhi Gita ki koi na sunta, na koi Quran ki sunta; […]
She calls herself Poornima Travelling Sukumar and for good reason. She is currently travelling with a cargo of goodwill to Kashmir in a lorry. This art caravan she says is called Winter on Wheels and is gathering warm clothing for the Kashmiris affected by the recent floods. At every stop, she and her co-traveller Akram Feroz also make […]
Entrepreneur and mother Deepa Kumar has issues with the blanket terminology that surrounds the issue of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). “To start with, I don’t quite agree with the distinction between a ‘good touch’ and a ‘bad touch.’ If there is a touch that a child needs to distinguish as good or bad, we are already in dangerous […]
In parts, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider replays keynotes from a classic Shakespearean dirge with a sly wink. So we are offered the jovial grave diggers. The skull gnashing in glee. The sinner in a moment of redeeming prayer. The ghost who is not a ghost afterall but is Roohdar..the keeper of another man’s soul and all its agony. […]
Taslima Nasrin’s Lajja, one of the most controversial bestsellers in the world has turned twenty. As bibliophiles across the world celebrated the Banned Books Week from September 21-27, Nasrin, an award-winning author of 37 books, memoirist, physician, humanist and human rights activist looked back at the long road she has travelled with Lajja. Across continents, through death […]
The ‘anniversary’ of the Shakti Mills rape has come and gone. Three of the five accused have been sentenced to death and the media jamboree has moved on. In search of another story. Another survivor who must be identified and paraded before a hungry audience while the convicts are taken to whatever hell they have been consigned to […]
A week ago a friend challenged me to the ALS ice bucket challenge. I had already heard about it given that celebrities like Oprah, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates had taken it up. The obvious reason why I didn’t want to do it is I hate being cold and so the idea of dumping a […]
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 […]
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 […]