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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Many a time, I scroll my Facebook wall, see my posts and tell myself, “Oh! My life is an open-book!” From posting myriad of status messages about trivial things to blogging about some earth-shattering topics, I’ve been constantly striving to record my life. Despite being self-expressive, I realised that I haven’t let a word out […]
Last night in Bangalore, the cast of the play Nirbhaya got a standing ovation, each one of us standing for our own private reason. I for one stood because I thought it was admirable, how the cast made public perhaps the most painful truths of their lives. The tears were real, this was no acting. […]
Have they come for you yet? They could be anyone. A new oraganisation committed to keeping women out of pubs, jeans, self-hoods and a sense of freedom. Khap elders calculating whether you can fall in love with a boy in the same village and if you do, whether you should be hung in public or […]
Yesterday, I saw her again, No sign of recognition, Now I know there needn’t be any. Little grey eyes had changed. The first time she followed me, Tugged at my stole and called to me. A smile so innocent, asking for money. Ragged hair and shaggy clothes, Not worth a care, I know, Too busy […]
Once there was a little girl who was perfect in every way. Beautiful, smart, loving and kind. Her parents loved her until their next child arrived and then the next and the next. Before she knew it she had to grow up and take care of herself all at the age of five. And when […]
So Gulaab Gang is not really about Gulabi Gang or Sampat Pal. They just decided the colour pink was fetching, the lathis provocative and the idea of a gang of self-willed, rustic women commercially viable and they went for it. The intention was never to give credit where it is due. I also find it […]
It was with a sense of dread that I watched the Geetika Tyagi ..Subhash Kapoor video. In a tastefully decorated room where friends possibly gather to discuss films and life..a conversation unfolded that could not have been easy for any of the people present. A young woman with naked pain and revulsion in her voice. A friend trying […]
Politics and wars decimate history, memory, geography, architecture, human life and art. No city knows this better than Baghdad. Baghdad has been battered by decades of war and has lost among other things a sense of normalcy that human existence thrives on. In the worst of times, art comes to the rescue of the human spirit and reminds it […]
Last weekend, I had the time and opportunity to watch two films in two days. Both are based on true life stories, and also based in large part on the personal accounts of the protagonists. Both have been hailed as wonderful films with performances which are Oscar worthy. On the face of it, they did not have […]
I was watching Rajdeep Sardesai getting into a blather on the VIP culture on CNN-IBN the other day. It appears that a Member of Parliament missed his connecting flight from Mumbai to Indore as his flight from Goa had been delayed. The Honourable MP had to spend the night in Mumbai. The DGCA has now asked the private […]
I read this article in The Times of India the other day, with a growing sense of dismay. No – am not talking of accidents, murders or rapes. Those seem to be happening as routinely as clockwork, even now. I’m talking of Nirbheek (I believe that’s what it is called). Nirbheek is said to be India’s first gun for women, a […]
There is something sickening and violating about the way Sunanda Pushkar’s life and death are being played out round the clock on our TV screens. Her voice, images, letters, life and death make for compulsively watchable television. One channel even played an “exclusive” mobile camera footage of the suite where […]