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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I’m not a black mother or a white mother. I’m just a mother. I’m not a black person or a white person. I’m just a person. With a beating heart that can break. With blood that runs through my veins. With a sense of right and wrong etched deep in my psyche. The very same […]
Let us call her Divya. Because that is her name. And this is not a story that merits a ‘name changed to protect identity’ clause. Divya lived in a small town and was studying to be a nurse. And had the same dreams for her life like any other 21-year-old – a good job, a decent […]
Let’s go on a walk down Chimbai Road in Bandra. Through the bylanes, passing some vintage-cute bungalows, till we hit a decrepit bungalow with suspected squatters, take that left and walk till we reach the water’s edge. This is the Chimbai Koli village. Just across the water to the left, across the water you won’t […]
My best friend messaged me one fine morning , “Why haven’t you written anything in so long?” I replied that I haven’t had an experience worth sharing in a while. However I did inform her that I was on an active look out for a story and perhaps my upcoming travel plans would be of […]
Many of us want to make a difference to the world but some of us already are and we can help such path-breakers and support causes that resonate with us. Here is one such NGO you can support. Here is a brief introduction to SDIE (Sahasra Deepka: Foundation for Education). ** SDIE (http://sdie.org/cms/)was founded by […]
Society in India is coming of age. It has begun to openly acknowledge the word ‘gay,’ before kids and in movies etc. Unfortunately our minds are not open enough to accommodate and treat the gay community with the same respect that we accord to heterosexuals. There is a subtle stigma attached to this word which […]
Long minutes, maybe a few hours were spent this week in the heart of a police station where I for the first time witnessed the daily workings of a place we usually associate with dark images of intimidation, apathy and incompetence, especially if you are a woman with a complaint. This one was surprisingly..for want […]
The memories of being beaten up in a Bangalore bus in 1995 have faded away. Bangalore to me is a safe city where I have moved around freely without being conscious of my clothes and have worked late hours as well. But yes, the sense of personal safety any city gives a woman can shatter […]
I have tried not to write, after the hopeless events in December 2012, when along with an enraged India, I last reacted to the brutal rape of an innocent girl in New Delhi, in broad urban limelight. The hopelessness that grips me is unbearable as I watch some leaders of the nation promise action and swear punishment to the […]
The Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar missed his vocation in life. He should have been a performer. From what little we can make out from his wooden expression, whenever he appears on television to participate in well orchestrated press conferences, he would have turned out to be a terrible actor. But how does that […]
The following piece was written post a series of blasts in Bangalore in 2008..today another bomb attack in the city refreshed the horror.. Terrorism kills more than just people. It blasts to bloody pieces, our faith in the ultimate rightness of all things and in the idea that life is beautiful. It shatters […]
I do not know if this matters. If anything matters. Especially when close to 4000 lives did not matter. When the survivors who were left behind to mourn them and battle an implacable system, did not matter. Have not mattered for over 29 years. Today the news that Congress leader Jagdish Tytler “may be in […]