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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When one takes a good long look at the people around us, the world in general – what does one see ? Does one see peace, harmony, equality or does one see discrimination, prejudice, inequity ? One look and it is only too evident that if there is one thing definitely on the increase, it is intolerance. […]
I read this book years ago and wanted to share this with you because it really jolted me out of my apathy and excessive narcissism . I hope it will inspire you to care about the less fortunate and do something for them this year. The title of the book –Leaving Microsoft to Change the World– was what […]
We all knew of his talent as an actor, his passion for theatre and the dexterity with which he anchored enjoyable television programs. Many articles discussed these as we bid farewell to Farooque Shaikh. But his contribution to the world’s most successful public health programme is perhaps less well known. The polio eradication campaign in India, had roped in a […]
There is no easy way to understand death but when it comes after prolonged suffering, it brings with it release for the one who departs. It leaves behind a sense of emptiness because a life has ended. It leaves behind the fullness of grief that in time finds solace in a sense of closure. There […]
I have never really understood the concept of writing about rapes and condemning the act, because isn’t it obvious that it is wrong? Why do we need to state the obvious every now and again? And in spite of various magazines, television channels, celebrities, bloggers and ordinary men and women voicing their disgust and shock […]
If life came with a rule book, I would be the first one to buy it. It would have been so much easier to go buy a book, with clearly formatted rules to live by in your life, face every setback. A book just like the easy cookbook that dishes out simple recipes! ** But then a cookbook doesn’t vouch […]
I’ve been asking myself this question for quite some time now. The gang rape in Delhi served to make it more urgent. “Where is our country headed ?” I’m sure lots of other people too, pretty much like me, are echoing the despair that one feels within oneself. Our country is steeped in a shroud […]
She’s been named Damini, Braveheart, Nirbhaya and counting. Now we know her real name and to that 23- year- old girl from Delhi, I, for one, doff my hat. If ever we’ve seen a symbol of courage, of hope, of fortitude, of fighting against all odds, she’s been it. ** Having been subjected to the […]
Whether you are waving trishuls, brooms, an imperious hand or a Supreme Court Verdict before the masses, it is all about control, isn’t it? How can we control minds, lives, body parts, power centres, vote banks? And control those we do not approve of, dislike, or cannot understand or do not give a damn about? […]
Hard as it is to believe now, Tarun Tejpal was my hero. Not just from his early Tehelka days when he took on the establishment fearlessly and showed us what journalism was all about but from 19 years back when he was the features editor of Financial Express and I was a rookie reporter into […]
I had scoffed at Asaram Bapu’s statement when he said that a sure shot way to prevent rape is to call the would-be-rapist “bhaiyya”. The Khap in Haryana added more flavour by coming out with statements that pointed towards Chinese food as the culprit behind rapes, not men. Mohan Bhagwat went a step further by claiming Western […]
In two seemingly unrelated incidents, a woman was brutally attacked in a Bangalore ATM..and in another..a woman journalist assaulted in an elevator by a high-profile editor in a fit of what he says, was an appalling “lapse of judgement.” In the first instance, the weapon of attack was a machete. In the second, the sense […]