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 all started with the outlet tube of the washing machine snapping open at the joint, a couple of weeks back. The existing tape had to be removed, the outlet pipes fitted together again properly and taped up securely with insulation tape. Once I was done repairing the pipe, casual conversation led to me […]
Actor and former VJ Purab Kohli is enraged by the recent rape of a child in Bangalore and the crimes against women in the rest of the country. “I thought, after the December 12 case in New Delhi, these incidents would stop but they seem to be spreading like an epidemic. I just sat […]
She is hard to classify or sum up in stock phrases that are usually used for a mainstream female actor. She strains against the tyranny of preconceptions about women and their bodies in cinema and in life. She speaks passionately against misogyny at every level. In language that does not sound like sloganeering but […]
Red, green, purple! Every time Keerat pulled off one romper and put on the other, her eight month old wiggled and chuckled, chubby hands grabbing at the young mother’s arms as she fretted over the colour that best lightened her dusky baby’s skin tone. ** “She looks dark in each of these,” Keerat wiped her brow, […]
When we hear about women, who are ill-treated in Afghanistan, Pakistan and a few other countries, we often catch ourselves feeling happy about living in India, where we presume that many women are independent, safe and considered ‘equals’. While the recent crimes unleashed against women prove that this country is not really women-friendly, I […]
I write this today with a deep sense of sadness, anger and helplessness. Animals in India have lost a warrior. In 2011. I was living in Delhi, training to be fund raiser for an animal shelter. Part of my job entailed having a good idea of existing infrastructure, so I requested that I be allowed […]
I’ve always been interested in stories. I guess it began with the bedtime stories crafted by Papa when we were kids. Carefully personalized for children. So there was He-Man, running alongside the warrior goddess, Teela Radhika . Stories of Himalayan heroics by grandfathers. Growing up in Bengal meant the inevitable fascination for the Durga Ma, the Mother Goddess, […]
I wish the world would understand what we look like when the stars see us. A blimp in the blackness of the universe. A sole blazing sun supporting this delicately balanced eco-system. Perhaps we would then stop rampaging through this world and her resources without a care. We as a race completely fail to see […]
Intense emotion for someone/thing. I guess. I’m not sure how to exactly describe love – I guess you know love when you see starry skies or monsoon nights. As you sink your teeth into that oh-so-perfect blueberry muffin. or your toes into oh-so-squishy sand. ** Love is owl-spotting and tree climbing. Tribal beats beneath […]
Housing is one of the key issues facing our overstretched planet today. According to UN reports, over 30 per cent of the planet’s urban population lives in slums, in great deprivation without fundamental amenities like water, sanitation, adequate space. 35 per cent of the rural population does even worse and more than 2 billion people all over the world […]
When you are a girl of about eight, and you tell your parents and relatives that you want to be a police woman, you get a pat on your back and a smile, but fast forward the same statement by 10 years, and the smile disappears into a smirk and you hear, ‘You’re a girl […]
While sitting outside a café or at a beach or simply just walking down the street, I like to watch people. I like the old grumpy uncle in my apartment who never smiles, but dotes on his dogs. I love to see little Emily play with her nanny. I admire the gorgeous Lebanese lady and her amazing […]