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…
Read More
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…
Read More
“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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
You are browsing archives for
A girl was hacked in my neighbourhood two evenings ago. This morning, a girl of about the same age who comes to teach my son, walked in with fear all over her face and asked, “Did you see the newspaper, maam? I walk through the same market every evening after my classes. Yesterday, I saw […]
It has been over 10 days since Fasih Mahmood practically disappeared from his residence in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, where he worked as an engineer. On May 13, Sunday, Mahmood was taken away by a group of Indian and Arab men, all in civil dress, and their house searched, while his wife, Nikhat Perveen, was held in a […]
Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS), condemn the assault on three women under-trials, Angela Sontakey, 42, Sushma Ramteke, 22, and Jyoti Chorghe,19, in the Mumbai District Women’s Prison in Byculla. On March 31, they witnessed an assault upon some other inmates by the prison staff. When they tried to intervene, they too were attacked by the staff. […]
Well, this news did not make the headlines but the world observed Heritage Day on April 8 this year. In a country struggling under the crushing weight of poverty, illiteracy and corruption, any mention of heritage is treated with incredulity. Oh no, we are not a nation too high on heritage walks or preserving landmarks. The appreciation […]
Something about the Aarushi Talwar case tugs at my heart. I feel transfixed every time the TV splashes Aarushi’s childhood pictures and videos. The normalness of the images is chilling in that they bear no hint, not a shimmer of the terrible fate that awaits this family round the corner. The clips reveal a regular, attractive […]
I am just back from the movie Ishaqzaade. On the face of it, a usual and regular outing for us empty nesters. But this particular viewing turned out to be a very different experience. For one, we chose to go to Delite Diamond on Aruna Asif Ali Road to watch this flick. It is a very different world […]
Mothers are born flawed. If they don’t see imperfections in themselves, which is unlikely, someone else will. But these questions and doubts a mother faces today are unique to the times. Our grandmothers were different. They were undivided souls. They did not, most of the time, think of themselves as creatures of personal ambition. My […]
He raises his eyebrow. Flicks a tear off his sculpted, strikingly beautiful face. Leans forward. Cups his chin. He is not Oprah but we could be wrong. Satyamev Jayate is a well-intentioned show. It has got one thing right. The fact that in a country where we are oblivious to the obvious, a show about […]
A few days back I found a petition forwarded by Richard Loitam’s parents in my inbox. The same Richard who was brutally beaten to death a few nights ago in a reputed Bangalore college. A few months in a college in the capacity of an occasional teacher made me react to this news with far more […]
A 24- year- old Indian student was shot dead near the Boston University in USA on April 19. He was a grad student from Odisha, nearing completion of his degree at the University’s School of Management. As the news went live on transcontinental wires, my thoughts flew to his parents and the excruciating process they […]
It was the Anna phenomenon that threw the Indian middle class into the limelight. For the first time since 1947, a swathe of humanity lifted itself up and marched into the Ramlila grounds and the gaze of the waiting TV cameras. Until that moment, the lot had remained invisible; they did not vote, they did […]
The two convicts in the Pune BPO employee rape-cum-murder case, Purshottam Borate and Pradip Komokate, were sentenced to death, sometime back. News of sexual violence against women sends me into an overdrive.I am approaching 50 but am as angry, as touchy about this business of the second sex as I was, 30 years ago. The reason […]