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 couple of years ago, film maker Tom Shadyac, known for blockbuster comedies like Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, Patch Adams and The Nutty Professor walked into his luxurious new 17000 sq ft Beverly Hills home which had more bedrooms, bathrooms and uninhabited spaces than he would ever enjoy and he had an epiphany. That this success was just an idea […]
Maya Angelou, American author, poet and activist, wrote on her Facebook page on May 26: “An unexpected medical emergency caused me to cancel my visit to the Major League Baseball Civil Rights Game ceremony. I am so proud to be selected as its honoree. However, my doctors told me it would be unadvisable for me […]
So, I was out in Mylapore this evening. And there was a mela all around. The pavement shops were selling everything from terracotta pots and pans to herbal oils for mosquito bites to cheap plastic toys and knick-knacks. Fortune tellers sat on the roadside with their parrots picking out fortune cards for hopeful clients. […]
I have imagined, often, what it must feel like, to die. Do I gradually lose awareness of my body, one part at a time and slip away? Do I become excruciatingly aware of it as the mind recedes and the life force that I am makes its presence known? Is it painful? Is it relieving? […]
As a wanderer, I have been to places that have made me squeal in happiness, and others that have silenced me in awe. Places that render me motionless. But at times, I have chanced upon places that have made me experience all of that at once. Kumartuli, Kolkata. Where forms are fashioned out of clay. […]
Has it ever happened to you that you are having a conversation with someone and even though both of you were speaking the same language you couldn’t really understand a word of what they were saying? Walls of cultural references, upbringing, experiences and age separate you. You could tell them what it was like to […]
It is only a make-believe that we are born free. We are not. Have you wondered why authorities register your birth? To keep track of you. It is like tying a collar radar on the neck of a beast so one could trace it as and when required and curb its movements. The word ‘official’ is quite […]
I have spoken of collective consciousness, oneness and a shared divinity before. But has it ever occurred to you that we all are children of the same mother? She is not human and she is not exactly a Divine Mother. She is made up of the same elements that make up our bodies. She is […]
We are fragmented beings at many levels, living in a fragmented world, trying so hard to patch together our fragmented lives. The chinks, the cracks, the scars and the wounds leave us feeling incomplete. This hole we try to fill with things we seek on the outside, failing to realize that they can never make […]
The winds of change blow hard Rattling my windows Shaking every tree in my yard I flinch under the covers Frightened and sick. ** I try to shut out the howling storm But it will not be ignored One by one the windows shatter And my blanket of safety gets whipped up in the […]
*** I don’t want the fleeting happiness that comes from acquiring beautiful things. Nor the shallow mirth that comes from people who please you, praise you and bring you gifts. But I crave the satisfaction of one who need not try so hard to prove one self in a cruel world. One who without seeking […]
I live in a small town, with cement roads and dust smitten air. We relish the small town luxury of maintaining a garden, in the front as well as in the backyard of our bungalow. We never got a landscape designer or a planner for the garden. Instead, through the years, we just collected […]