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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The urge to learn a new language breathes down my back the most when I realise how a treasure trove of heart-rending music remains beyond my reach. The Malayalam movie Mayaanadhi’s (2017) rendition of Bawra Mann (cue: Swanand Kirkire, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi) took me to Sachin Siby’s rendition of Kanmani Anbodhu, of which I understood […]
There is a telling anecdote about Kishori Amonkar’s early years as a classical sensation when she was rattling off the number of shows she had been booked for and her mother and guru Mogubai Kurdikar, herself a legendary disciple of Ustad Alladiya Khan’s Jaipur Atrauli gharana, heard her out and asked her if her calendar had […]
Prince frightened the hell out of me when I first discovered him as a teenager. His compelling androgyny baffled me. His charisma seemed almost reptilian. It drew you in its silky coils and never let go. It was dangerous. Erotic. His breathy voice leaving little shivers in its wake. And because this Prince inhabited a universe that […]
My first introduction to the unrepeatable David Bowie was Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. A disturbing, cathartic, strangely uplifting film about war that was made in 1983 by Nagisa Oshima. Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a mind bending war prisoner who is so free, nothing can break him. Not violence. Not torture. Not perverse mind games. […]
For some afternoons now, I have been listening to the Azaan. Its hauntingly beautiful melody floats over the houses, slips through the lanes to reach me. I don’t really know where it comes from; it doesn’t sound very near. But sound has a way of getting through. The muezzin seems to put all the power of his meditation into […]
In the days before relentless marketing made stars of one-hit wonders, there were legends like Kalyanji-Anandji pioneering live concerts all over the world, scoring thousands of hit songs in over 250 films, giving breaks to lyricists like Anand Bakshi, Gulshan Bawra, Qamar Jalalabadi, Anjaan, Verma Malik and M G Hashmat, and launching the careers of […]
During the 53rd edition of the Bengaluru Ganesh Utsava, veteran singer Vani Jairam was in Bengaluru to share the stage with fellow singers P Susheela and Vijay Prakash. When we caught up with the legend hours before her performance, she was struggling to find some quiet amid the din of rehearsals. Finding quietude has not been difficult […]
Jab kabhi tera naam lete hain… dil se hum intaqam lete hain meri barbadiyon ke afsane… mere yaron ka naam lete hain bas yahi ek jurm hai apna… hum muhabbat se kaam lete hain har qadam par gire par seekha… kaise girton ko tham lete hain (Whenever I take your name, I put my heart through agony.. […]
Musicians Roopkumar Rathod and Sunali Rathod celebrated 25 years of togetherness last December and his voice softens as he says, “It is music that brought us together…the music that we eat and breathe. And the music that we live for and will die for together. But a relationship needs nurturing, compromises, space and unconditional support. […]
Even in his seventies, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma of the legendary musical team of Laxmikant Pyarelal has the cherubic innocence of a child and the effusive humility of a waterfall. He was in the city to helm a musical night organised by the Rotary Club, and when he masterfully conducted a 30-piece orchestra, memories of […]
Master percussionist V Selvaganesh is in the middle of a recording and the year ahead is packed with concerts in India and abroad. He was recently in Bengaluru to take part of the ninth edition of Idea Jalsa-Music For The Soul, a concert where he played with Peter Robert Lockett, an English percussionist and recording […]
When was the last time you saw a Hindustani music legend in a video that reformulated the conventions of popular and classical idioms? Chances are that the image of Shubha Mudgal orchestrating monsoon in a chawl will flash through your mind. You will remember her rousing vocals in Ab ke saawan and in Man ke […]