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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My first job as a sub-editor in The Economic Times in 1994 brought me in touch with many people. Some were just colleagues, some were mentors and a few became life-long friends. It is hard for me to categorise Madhuri Velegar K. She headed Bangalore’s Femina desk and we hardly spoke though we worked for […]
He is a conjurer of narratives. The story teller who brings to life the rising of spring sap in a winter-struck tree and then creates the moment when the silence of months gushes out as maple syrup. ** He paints with his gestures the journey in a canoe of a man and a woman as […]
To a question am asked often (Why do you write?), my answer is simple. I see people. Really see them. When I see a mind, a talent, an imagination at work, the world falls away. My own imperfections fall away. I connect with the energy at work and my own energy feeds on it and […]
In our small balcony we have several flowering plants. Some have been with us for years and others we have collected during our travels and here in Florida. Amongst them is a rose plant that used to bloom bountifully, yielding sometimes 15 blossoms. Cold weather in my part of the world has stymied it. It has […]
Imagine a sea of humans in a vast expanse of darkness, A lone candle burns in the hands of one, Observing his neighbors’ unlit candles, He proceeds to share the light of his candle with them. The light grows in intensity and more shadows jump out of the darkness, Almost threatening to snuff […]
In a rustic hut near a river tributary On a secluded land with living serenity In a small temple of a beautiful deity A peaceful mind in an agile body Seeking truth in breath and life in beauty O’ ascetic.. immerse..immerse me in divinity On a hilly terrain inside a forest Beside a Buddha statue […]
I visited Sri Lanka last year and that is the first time I came across a sandakada pahana or a moonstone. This is a semi-circular stone that is seen at the entrance of the temples at Anuradhapuram and Polonnaruwa. Buddhism flourished here and the moonstone became more and more pronounced with intricate carvings and came a […]
We believe that God made this Universe and populated our World with His creatures including his masterful creation, humankind. Strangely, we also believe that He then called all those he had made in his own image and said, “I now pronounce you Hindu and Muslim. And Jew and Christian and Buddhist and Jain and Sikh.” […]
Some meetings are life changing. Some people meant to enter your life to show you that nothing is random, that life has a design or like Mary Morgan quotes Rumi to emphasise just incase you missed the point, ” Someone else is driving the caravan.” ** I met her quite by chance last year and […]
I read this book years ago and wanted to share this with you because it really jolted me out of my apathy and excessive narcissism . I hope it will inspire you to care about the less fortunate and do something for them this year. The title of the book –Leaving Microsoft to Change the World– was what […]
Time waits for no man and yet we spend our lifetimes waiting for something to come along so we can finally live our lives the way we imagined it. Time becomes our enemy, robs us of peace, health and happiness and keeps us prisoners of hope. The clock ticks on incessantly – each tick making us […]
You should do things that make you happy. ** No, really. You may start out loving something because of certain reasons. I started out loving cooking because the man I loved, loved good food. It grew into baking, into picking organic over regular foods, over local produce over imported ingredients. It has come a long […]