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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When an actor who built his career playing the poster boy of anti-establishment resistance tweets fake news about how “bacterial energies” during amavas can be dissipated by clapping and shankh naad, you realise once again that opportunistic artists always sell what is in demand. They know the season of discontent and dissent is over and […]
Aarey Milk Colony was envisioned in 1949 by Dara Nusserwanji Khurody (winner of 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award with Dr Verghese Kurien) and inaugurated with the planting of a sapling by the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951. Over the decades, it has grown to be one of Mumbai’s most cherished lung spaces. Weeks before the […]
Poet Majaz Lakhnawi wrote once, “Yeh tera zard rukh yeh khushk lab yeh waham, yeh wahshat.. Tu apne sar se yeh baadal hata leti to accha tha.. Tere maathe pe yeh aanchal bahot hi khoob hai lekin.. Tu is aanchal se ek parcham bana leti to accha tha..” (Your pale face, your parched lips..these doubts..this […]
No, there is no real evidence that Mr Bachchan’s daughter-in-law had to marry a tree before she could marry his son but a gentlemanly, deep-seated patriarchy has long been a part of who he is. Many years ago, on Karan Johar’s talk show, he expressed his sincere admiration and absolute respect for Kajol because she […]
The idea of entitlement is not new to the Indian film industry. Nor is the hegemony fuelled by privileged stars and their coteries. So it took someone of Nawazuddin Siddqui’s talent, 15 years to land his first solo lead in Manjhi (though he played a pivotal part in Gangs of Wasseypur) but all it took […]
Satyajit Ray would have approved (if you disregard the product placements). Shoojit Sarkar goes back to his roots literally and cinematically with Piku, a film about nothing in particular when it trundles, carrying a baggage of eccentricity and family history from Delhi to Kolkata in a taxi. But in retrospect, it is about the little […]
In Milan Lutheria’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, a female protagonist relived the ultimate male fantasy of the 70s by wearing a knotted and polka-dotted Bobby blouse. The nostalgia for Bobby is so strong that when Twinkle or Tina Khanna was styled for her debut film Barsaat, she wore minis and blouses inspired from […]
Yasser Usman’s biography, Rajesh Khanna, The Untold Story Of India’s First Superstar (Penguin) reminds me of the Motown gala in 1983, when Michael Jackson at the peak of his powers debuted the moonwalk. Throughout the performance, he was in a zone, not really aware of how many people were dancing in the aisles, […]
Can Shakespeare be reinterpreted with irreverence? Can psychological drama meld into physical theatre? Can one actor play 14 characters? If you were to ask these questions to Australian theatre professional, Tref Gare, his answer would be a resounding, ‘yes.’ Gare was in India for the first time to perform in and as Kings’s Player from […]
Long before the Rachel Cut was made famous by Jennifer Aniston in F.R.I.E.N.D.S, there was the Sadhana Cut. In 1960, a frothy Love In Simla gave us an unforgettable romance with a little pixie in the lead. She was Sadhana and in a key scene, turns from a Cinderella to a princess when her grandmother […]
Watching Eega reinstated in me the faith that films can still conjure up ‘wonderment’ from ‘seemingly’ the silliest of ideas provided the filmmaker decides to complement his technical skills with certain audaciousness. A bitter-sweet experience which left me exhilarating and exasperating at the same time, the film has to be the most outlandishly inventive and entertaining film to have […]
Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) is walking out of a police station with his black-listed benefactor who has just bailed him out of jail. Ashwini Kumar (Dilip Kumar), a revered police officer and his father warns, “If you go too far on this path..you may not be able to return.” Vijay turns to face him and […]