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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It happens with all journalists. You work on a story, watch it slowly build up, wait for an opportune moment, and finally the story never sees the light of day, for whatever reason. I have never cursed myself for stories that have ended up dead, for that was always a frustrating part of the game; […]
A few archival snatches from the morning of August 15, 1947 came with a national newspaper today. The sepia sheets spoke among other things, of cinema, riots, a Mahatma on fast, a toothpaste ad asking a very relevant question, “Are you afraid to kiss him?” Not much has changed, has it? If you discount the […]
Recently, two news reports more or less summed up the chasm between less and excess in India. An NGO alleged that 64 Bhil children in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district have died of malnutrition. On the other hand, Hyderabad got ready to celebrate its version of the Spanish Tomatino festival and a friend created a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=185221971542829&id=134206369977723#!/pages/Protest-the-Tomatino-festival/156765734401050) to question the sanity of […]
My fourth daughter was born on the 12th day after Ganesh Chathurthi. She entered the world just as a bunch of people on their way to the sea, passed by my house. Amidst all that noise, my offspring made her presence felt with a loud cry. My wife lay there exhausted and drained with […]
Angry and helpless, Lakshmi ran back home as fast as her feet could carry her, away from the screams of the child. Earlier that day her friend and neighbour, Meha, had called her to say she suspected the maid’s daughter had stolen her opal ring. Meha had come out after her bath and found the […]
On the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a friend sent to me some documentary footage about the day when nothing out of the ordinary had happened in Hiroshima. People were working, heeding traffic lights, having tea and then in a few seconds, like a survivor recalls, from a efficient town going quietly about the […]
Kanchi, Chicklet, Son Pari, Parachute, Pitcher, Gol Chakker, Chunniwala, Mickey Mouse…wondering why we are rambling about these unrelated words? Well, these are just a few names out of the 40 odd games that children of Khirkee village – a semi-urban area of South Delhi – have invented as part of outdoor playing. Nothing unique about this, […]
Recently, I lost someone very dear to me. To depression and fatal hopelessness. And this relative, a spontaneous optimist was not given to melancholy. He was someone to whom everyone gravitated. Animals. Children. Old people. Relatives who needed a hospitable home for a holiday or to recuperate from a family problem. He was not given to verbal flourishes. He never said, ‘‘I […]
“Well..a day full of happiness! The children at Deen Bandhu School were very enthusiastic and fun loving. They were full of energy. I loved watching the kids dance and loved painting and kite making with them. I was distributing painting sheets to children when suddenly a girl of class four held my hands tightly and asked for my mobile. I gave her the […]
The young have many voices. Of dissent. Of protest. And because the young gaze is unsparingly honest, it is potentially a catalyst for change. Change happens when disparate dots are connected and scattered ideas synergise a movement and no one knows that better than AIESEC, the worlds largest youth run organization. Almost 60 mellow years of age, it however is […]
A live wire left unattended on ground killed Sunita, a little school girl a few days back in Bangalore. A rag picker also fell in an open drain and died. These are not stray incidents. They happen time and again to claim lives randomly in a city falling apart at its seams. A wall falls, killing a young girl and the blame is […]
Christmas Eve. Oxford Circus underground station was starting to get crowded with commuters returning after last-minute Christmas shopping. The people around us were all carrying shopping bags from department stores and toy stores. A couple of women next to me looked exhausted, tottering on their high heels, barely able to stand, loaded as they were […]