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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Dusk had fallen when short and stocky Lt Col Rajnish Behl, Sena Medal, entered the old stone building with sweeping arches and green ivy climbing up fading brick walls. It used to be a school in British times but was now serving the Army’s need for a Base Hospital. Stepping briskly, he walked down the […]
Her eyes gleamed brighter than the pretty gold ring shining on her frail finger. She stared at it in shock and awe, examining her finger from different angles and muttering in utter excitement, “This is for me didi? Really! This gold ring is for me?” I nodded with affection, my mind still recoiling from the […]
It’s 22 years almost to the day now and no one remembers him: The second person who immolated himself following the VP Singh government’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations. Surinder Singh Chauhan perished, unlike Rajeev Goswami (who died in 2004), pictures of whose burning body appeared in several papers and made him […]
An ideal society should be class-less and caste-less, that is understandable, but is it right or even possible to build a society that has no family structure at all? What would be desirable – abolishing the family unit or a fundamental change in it? Social structures based on Caste or Class are either a religious […]
So here is the thing. We are living in an India where voices can be muffled, and young cartoonists can be jailed for creative dissent and protesters can be beaten up and shown that the State is intolerant of inconvenient points-of-view whether they are about dams or nuclear plants or corruption. And it is […]
Sometime in 2006, United 93, a taut, almost unemotional account of the fourth hijacked plane that did not reach its destination on the morning of September 11 , 2001 hit the theatres. What moved me about the film was its intention to not manipulate the emotions of viewers who had on one terrible morning learnt […]
Most Indian parents follow a religion of making available to their kids all they missed out on. Some go a step further; wanting to give their kids all that they did not have plus what they think the next generation should have. A sport was on one such wish list for our girls. We […]
In the light of what is going on in India and several other regions of the world, I believe that calling Che Guevara lucky, is at least technically correct, if not entirely justifiable. It does not intend to belittle the tireless courage, leadership and passion for assuring equality for ALL men, that the […]
For years, like a homing pigeon I’d return to a small salon In the backlanes of my home The door opened with tinkling bells Where beyond a pink curtain, red dragons flew across the wall I surrendered myself to the gaggle of girls With smiling eyes and poker-straight hair Who spoke a […]
(Pic courtesy sify.com) A few months ago, on a Facebook thread, I read a few comments against North-Eastern women, about North-Eastern people and their irrelevance to India, to a city like Bangalore. I was teaching at that time in a college and many of my students were North-Eastern, some of whom had already shared […]
“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in […]
As we are entering into the 65th year of Independence, a zeal, a fervor can be felt all around; and moreover, as we celebrate the glorious achievements of our six Olympians, who have made the whole nation proud with their feats, here are six cases which put every Indian, worth his salt, hang his head […]