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 I came to Chennai to join a newspaper as the chief sub-editor, I did not know this city. I had no friends here. I could not speak the language. There was just one thing I was absolutely clear about — this city was too hot, too crowded ( I was coming from Mangalore, […]
On a star-lit evening, Chef Naren Thimmaya, as iconic as Karavalli, the show-piece restaurant of Bangalore’s Gateway Hotel, watches a guest take pictures of the ambience. He smiles without knowing he is smiling. He is now an intrinsic part of the restaurant that has been widely celebrated for its culinary legacy of over two decades […]
Long minutes, maybe a few hours were spent this week in the heart of a police station where I for the first time witnessed the daily workings of a place we usually associate with dark images of intimidation, apathy and incompetence, especially if you are a woman with a complaint. This one was surprisingly..for want […]
The memories of being beaten up in a Bangalore bus in 1995 have faded away. Bangalore to me is a safe city where I have moved around freely without being conscious of my clothes and have worked late hours as well. But yes, the sense of personal safety any city gives a woman can shatter […]
The following piece was written post a series of blasts in Bangalore in 2008..today another bomb attack in the city refreshed the horror.. Terrorism kills more than just people. It blasts to bloody pieces, our faith in the ultimate rightness of all things and in the idea that life is beautiful. It shatters […]
Flinntheater and Jagriti Curtain Raiser’s present C sharp C blunt Flinntheater Kassel/ Berlin is proud to present its latest offering C sharp C blunt, an Indo-German collaboration. Drawing on a wide range of talent, this innovative devised performance is bound to intrigue as it goes on an exploration of the (un)known. Directed by Sophia […]
What is the meaning of a republic? Is it a selectively amnesiac entity where bull dozers run over and flatten the lives and dignity and pets and homes and belongings of the poor while builders advertise gated communities protected from the “noise and the pollution” of the big metros for the benefit of those they […]
I recently attended a protest rally against the brutal gang rape of a woman in Delhi. Fewer than 200 people turned up. Bangalore has a thriving theatre and arts community, writers, actors and an IT community that drives the economy of this city. But we don’t seem to have even a thousand people who could make […]
My wife drives. She is way ahead when it comes to this particular skill. Sometimes sitting next to her while she is driving helps me understand what she is up against whenever she gets behind the steering wheel. Most male drivers in the city don’t like women driving. This is regardless of the class they […]
The Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival 2012 in Bangalore pays a tribute to the dramatic genius of William Shakespeare and one of the short plays hosted at the festival is.. The Seduction of Lady Anne: Excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Richard III ** Synopsis: Lady Anne is in mourning as her husband Edward and her father-in-law Henry […]
(Pic courtesy sify.com) A few months ago, on a Facebook thread, I read a few comments against North-Eastern women, about North-Eastern people and their irrelevance to India, to a city like Bangalore. I was teaching at that time in a college and many of my students were North-Eastern, some of whom had already shared […]
Like many expats I too went through the various phases of resettling back in India: ‘touristy’ excitement, disorientation, annoyance and frustration, gradual adaptation and finally bi-culturality that has now allowed me to find my own sense of belonging in what I still consider my hometown, Bangalore. This is not the Bengaluru I left in 1978. […]