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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What is the value of a person whose dawn breaks on streets or railway stations who sips tea at dingy canteens each day whose sells scrap to live who sleeps under an empty sky Who is he in the city of dreams? I don’t know. Perhaps he is a mascot of disparity, inequality of empty […]
“The last breath/Exhaled/Is the last poem/Released. Then/The curtain falls…” But before the curtain fell, Kamala Das or Kamala Surayya or Madhavikutty exhausted many lives, lived free and in confinement..by choice and wrote compulsively and passionately till the desire to live and write both burnt itself out. And the clamorous din following her last breath that sifted her life and poetry? It […]
A picture of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, taken possibly in the 1960s, is on the cover of his latest anthology. His curly, unruly hair tumbles down his combat jacket. His jeans are frayed and with his boots making a statement all on their own, he looks like a cross between Che and George Harrison. This image, […]
Not easy To blow out your past In one breath! The dead candles On the birthday cake A jungle of nude trees That had once Sheltered me in their shade. A grudge of betrayal In their silent eyes! ‘We are the milestones Of the arduous trek’. I stand convicted….! Oh! How the Time’s trident- Tomorrow-today-yesterday […]
The mind fails to catch Ideas floating like sperms Waiting to be hit by conviction; To gestate and come to life Myriad images, like Vibrant butterflies Tempt; and then run amok, In the dark recesses of mind Across the hills and rivers, My thoughts run wild Then slip through my fingers Like bubbles bursting in the […]
She was left behind on the marbled staircase Just as she had begun to climb the first step into Solid colour. She could see pastels floating above her head Escaping as she tried to hold on to them. They floated up into the fluffy white mantle Lingering on the horizon before gliding towards Celestial city. […]
Mystifying silence within the prayers, the sounds of drums and bells the claps of devotees, the chants of priests the feeling of coming home on the edge of a river bank tender, cool breeze on my face feet immersed in the flow of eternity the deep stillness in the dancing flames of aarti in the […]
“Sirf ehsas hai rooh se mehsoos karo…pyaar ko pyaar hi rehne do koi naam na do.” (It is just a feeling..let the soul revel in it..let love be.. just love..try not to name it) So that in a nutshell is Gulzar for you. A man who does not name the obvious but will articulate what cannot be […]
“If I should have a daughter, instead of ‘Mom’, she’s gonna call me ‘Point B’, because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get […]
There was a time when young children in small Northern towns, regardless of their religious denominations, learnt Urdu. And when they grew up, many young men like my father could recite the Gita and write and read Urdu as if it was the most natural thing to do. ** The generation after his, caught up […]
Emptiness no matter how crowded life is with things and people… and what do I do with this silence that I hear even when so many voices are ringing? so many stand by my side …yet why do I feel I’ll fall ? so many answers everywhere but why is that one question missing to […]
In his world, trees are ancestors, rivers are mumbling old men, pines are charcoal sketches, mountains are Christmas cards painted in water-colours. Children running down hill slopes are fruits spilling out of baskets, rain is a rude intruder pounding on doors with wet knuckles , snow in Manali is a stealthy interloper that takes […]