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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Whoever has planted bougainvillae bushes right in the middle of the Bangalore- Mysore Highway has my vote. In the middle of dusty wilderness, driving past a splash of pink, white and green makes the heart sing. You also learn as you watch wild bushes on the side of the road thick with pink blossoms that […]
“Vegetarian!!!” intoned our cousin D, succinctly. “No fish, no chicken, no egg, no meat.” The waiter in the restaurant in Avanos, Turkey, nodded enthusiastically and then…looked blankly at us. Of the three of us, only D was vegetarian, rigidly so in fact and we needed to be sure of what would be served. By now, […]
Honestly, before I visited Masai Mara, I never gave much thought to what an wildlife Safari would be like. I never wondered about wildlife. I didn’t watch much of National Geographic while growing up. But then, I got a chance to witness an African Safari in all its glory and I can’t be more thankful. […]
We turned off the A-82; the first sight of the main village square of Scottish village of Drumnadrochit with a pub, restaurant, grocery shop and newsagent, straight out of an Enid Blyton story. Flowers bloomed everywhere; colorful petunias peered out of hanging baskets on […]
In March this year, I visited Istanbul. In addition to visiting the various tourist attractions like the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia etc, here are six things that I recommend and you CANNOT, should not miss doing in Istanbul. 1. Take two Bosphorus cruise rides – One in the daytime and one in the night. The day ride will give […]
‘Travel’ is a beautiful word. It breathes deep, sets you free and replaces familiar routes, responses and landmarks with the unexpected, the surprising. As you leave behind a city you live and work in, an invisible string gets loosened and releases you. The sky opens up. The sunlight becomes more concentrated and pure. Green fields […]
The aircraft had to land on this narrow piece of land that led straight to a valley. And that valley was where an ill-fated aircraft had crashed a few months ago, it had just gone on and off the runaway! That is all I could think of during my entire descent into Mangalore. I held […]
I love faces. I love the stories in them. Faces with nervous twitches. Open faces. Stoic faces. Faces that draw you in. Make you think. Shut you out as the distant outsider And a face with a life written on it. The past leading to the present, intertwined on one face. Telling stories about living […]
Tulfes is the most beautiful village I have ever seen. There are flowers everywhere, fat cats clean their whiskers on wood benches; apricot trees (yes trees) clamber up house walls; goats graze in fenced enclosures, horses neigh under trees, a beautiful church with paintings on stone walls stands sleepily at the corner and there is […]
We hire a nine seater from Hertz at the airport the next day for the staggering figure of Rs 90,000 a week. It was much cheaper when we had checked from India but we didn’t book then and now it’s too late for regrets. The guys flash their newly acquired International driving licenses (Rs 500 […]
Jet lagged and tired after 11 hours of flight, we land in Vienna. It is raining. We press our noses against the window of the taxi that is taking us to our hotel, zipping across the wet roads with some classical music playing softly in the background. It has cost us 70 Euros (nearly Rs […]
The blue waters of Brienz Lake are shimmering in the sun. Expressionless eyelashless cows are munching on some picture perfect green grass. Tulips are blooming prettily outside Swiss chalets. It could be a scene right out of a Yash Chopra film but there is no Shahrukh Khan traipsing across the yellow wildflower covered hillside, eyes […]