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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A 13-year old school girl from Bangalore went missing recently and was found in Hubli. I do not know the family personally, but the incident had me thinking really hard because I too am a mother. I feel, today all stake holders in the education system are facing a serious challenge. Parents, teachers and the society have […]
Internet sensation Ssumier S Pasricha’s recent video about Pammi aunty mocking a dark, overweight woman at a Teej function evoked mixed reactions. Was he mocking, dark and overweight women? Or was he mocking the women who mock them? If you watch his videos closely, every little narrative is about a woman deriding another woman, establishing the […]
While channel surfing a few days back, I saw Mika Singh punning upon Diana Penty’s surname and adding to good effect, “And Mika Kaccha!” I guarantee that you will not hear anyone in the film fraternity rising up in instinctive disgust over this comment just as most of them kept quiet when Salman Khan rose […]
For the longest time, cinema in the subcontinent referred to daughters as, “betiyan toh ghar ki izzat hoti hain.” The mindset being that women must always think first of the family honour because they always have to be accountable to the world and its honour keepers for what they say, think or do. A few […]
Welcome to this week’s atrocity Warhol guess what in the 21st century we are all devastated for 15 minutes ballard this exhibition defies your wildest imagining lone wolves and monolithic states at war and the battlefield the bodies of all the rest of us welcome to new atrocity same as the old atrocity Pic courtesy: […]
In a country where a mother of three babies is a five-time World Amateur Boxing champion, has represented India at the Olympics and won a medal, we recently had the director of Sultan defending his decision to show a pregnant wrestler meekly giving up her Olympic dreams while her husband hops from one international success to another. Because, […]
Duckback raincoat Bata shoes Camel ink Hero pen Nataraj pencils I’ve reached a point Where lists of things Once familiar Comfort me But I don’t believe things are worse The world Was always burning The skies Were always red And the end Was always near Near enough to smell The burning Of time But with […]
A while ago, a friend of mine, doing her Masters in an apparently premier institution, was rather excited because her boyfriend was coming to visit for a weekend- however, the thrill soon dissipated when she realized getting out of hostel for a weekend, that too to meet a boy (!) would be rather difficult. “Why […]
I’m often asked why there is such a long gap between my articles. My response is always the same: that I need something to make me really mad, an experience that agitates me enough to write about it. Usually, it takes a while, but I don’t worry much- I know that sooner or later I […]
Being accustomed to receiving information about the outside world through the NDTV app on my phone and articles on Facebook, it’d been a while since I read an actual newspaper. However, paranoia emerging out of rumours about the city I live in being on “high alert” led me to pick up a copy of the Deccan […]
I did not know Ishrat Akhond, one of the 28 diners killed in the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka. But a link took me to her Facebook page and something reached out to me like the warmth of a little persuasive flame. The words she had used to describe an Iftar meal. The words,”stubborn gladness” […]
I caught a glimpse of a serial on television the other day. This was the scene – a blind wife throws herself at the husband’s feet begging to be allowed to stay with him. Her disability is seen as a major hindrance that prevents her from doing her wifely duties and chores. Well-wishers urge the […]