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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In the end the bulldozer wins every argument. The war for real estate in India is waged brutally and with precise, cold blooded violence and the builder-politician mafia wins every time because we are not a democracy. We are a country where people like you and me rights only in theory and you just had […]
The Indian Railways have introduced a mandatory training program for their staff. It is imperative that every single official in the Indian Railways, right from the signalman to the station masters to the Mechanical Engineers not just undergo this training, it is absolutely vital that they pass this program with flying colours. Their jobs are […]
The great columnist of The Washington Post, Art Buchwald was perhaps, also a clairvoyant man. A tongue-in-cheek piece by him written nearly 30 years ago, in the wake of rising prices in the U.S.A, describes his own foray into grocery shopping with his wife. He has to pass an armed guard, show his I.D. and […]
In the years I lived in India in my parents’ home overlooking the slums, we would see drunken husbands beating up their wives. Girls pulled out of school and sent off to do housework. Polygamous husbands and their impoverished families. I always thought it had something to do with being poor and uneducated. I was […]
Tucked away in a remote part of Uttar Pradesh, India, is a firebrand of a woman. Her name is Sampat Pal, leader of the Pink Gang (Gulabi Gang). The word gang conjures up images of mobs of unruly thugs out to create chaos. But believe me this gang is a far cry from that. Clad […]
I came across this ad / poster when one of my friends posted it on a social networking site. I found it really offensive but thinking beyond the gut reaction, I really did not know what disturbed me more – the ad itself or the fact that people would actually fall for the ad and […]
Housing for all is a challenge faced by every developing country where the distance between the rich and the poor expands by the day. In cities today we see land being gobbled by real estate sharks, countless buildings and mall sprouting up but living amenities shrinking for the poor. The contrast between the gated communities […]
No matter how self-obsessed you are, you would have heard of Doctors Without Borders. Officially known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF, they are, like Marvel’s Avengers, superheroes who tread where devils have no fear of going either. They might even make you think of the Steinbeck story immortalised by Henry Fonda in Grapes of […]
‘The Child is father of the Man’, said Wordsworth and so it goes that kids in school must be taught that what will make them good men when they grow up. Yes, they must learn to read and write. They must mug up tables and dates. They must learn about the crops grown in outer […]
I’ve mentioned before, I’m relatively new to Kolkata.. Calcutta. Before coming here, I’ve never had domestic help. Today, I have a cook, a cleaner and someone to look after the little ones. I’m a little spoilt, if truth be told. I’m living an easy life, free to do as I choose. But having this freedom […]
Ever wondered why disaster movies show iconic architectural landmarks crumbling to pieces? Why terrorist attacks target buildings that stand for something more than just brick and mortar? Why September 11 was not just about a terrorist attack but a terrorist attack on the beating heart of New York? Why 26/11 was not just about […]
I wish the world had ended in December 2012. The cause for this pessimism is the recent terrorist attack that hit Nairobi. To sum it up, for those who haven’t been in the loop, militants attacked this plush mall, Westgate, in the heart of the city with bombs, grenades and subsequent firing. The cause? As illogical […]