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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Almost five years later..I can still see it. Feel it. The day..a haze of gold across acres of plantation land in Samathur, a quiet village off Pollachi in Tamil Nadu. And I sat in the back yard of the 6000 square ft Shenbaga Vilaasam, a heritage house where time was in no hurry to […]
Fireworks were exploding over Sultanahmet square in Istanbul, as we strolled back after dinner. It was our last night in Turkey, a country that had thrown quite a few surprises our way, all of them pleasant. The term Turkish delight could be applied to more […]
We were in a forest, in Kaziranga, Assam. Maybe not as dense as you imagine in your head, but a forest with pathways and wild elephant dung in a path that criss-crossed ours as we climbed up and up. His footsteps trampled the grass and shrubs, he made his own way, while we followed the […]
On the day of the launch of The Gateway Hotel Lakeside Hubli, the majestic Unkal lake in the distance is an endless silver sprawl. Hotel rooms do not usually open to views such as this. Nor do many hotels have nine acres of greens wrapped around them. No wonder then that an early riser is jogging around the […]
Every inch of landscape in a three mile radius around Hollywood screams of glamour, showbiz and drama. Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck beam at us from large posters that hang alongside the winding road . Upscale apartment complexes and palatial estates seem to look down their noses at us as we make our way to […]
Rows and rows of palm trees stand erect like sentinels along the winding roads of Los Angeles. They perhaps shoulder the responsibility of guarding the very wealthy angles (and some devils) who deign to reside here. Rubbing shoulders with them are towering high rises that fall just a few feet short of the doors of […]
Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard I don’t believe in travelling to get away. Yes, there have been times when the city has thrown so much more than I thought I could handle, that I […]
Someone in the world is excited about having just swiped their credit card online. They are putting in their leave application and checking out the best deals on travel packages. Someone is preparing themselves for an adventure, reading hotel and restaurant reviews. They are excitedly telling their friends about their next journey. Holding a golden […]
We drove 645 km, dealt with hours of traffic jams and walked 7 km in the dead of the night to reach Sangam. Enveloped in a cloud of mist with no beginning or end, the air was dense with chants, wails and cacophonic public announcements. We stood stupefied at how the darkest moonless sky had […]
In the twilight dappled ruins of a crumbling fort, swallows roost; And life goes on Under my toes, the stones burn. It is as if the fire still rages in the underground vaults of Chittorgarh where the beautiful queen Padmini flung herself into the flames 700 years back, along with 1200 other women and […]
Along the western border of Punjab where India ends and Pakistan begins (or the other way, depending upon which side you’re looking from), there lies a stretch of no man’s land, marked off by rusty barbed wire fencing. It hides the scar where a country was once cut into two. Overlooked by the bunkers of […]
Little did I anticipate the moving adventure that would follow, when I booked a group birding tour, by Caligo Ventures, five days in Trindiad and four in Tobago. It promised rainforests with Trogons, lodging with hummingbirds, turtles, caves and swamps..We were picked up at the Port of Spain airport by an Asa Wright Center […]