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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Insides of my skull Echoing sounds Of drumming water On tin window shields Banging the brain Into numb submission Fading slowly out of Thought, into morass. Looking out of glass Like fish in pointless swim My aquarium filled With moist air. Trapped must feel like this Free must feel like this Sightless must be […]
Father was always a fast walker; his strides were long, his gait effortless. When Calvin and I managed to match his pace during our morning walks in Boat Club, I panted more than my canine companion. I was a teenager then and Calvin was just two. Father was faster, brisker, and more focussed than most […]
There are times when we look at the world and feel despair. Events over the months of 2016 and part way across the threshold of 2017, have given us justifiable cause for such malaise. Trump will be president within days. The Syrians are either forgotten or vilified, Britain is leaving the EU, the weather has […]
The abandoned seed, Martyr of its creed, helps others to grow. The first random rain-drops Falling from the dark clouds On the scorching earth below Vanish into thin vapours, And yet…! Wakes up The languorous land, To take in The torrential rains With open arms. For each great shift Seeks sacrifices Of some pious souls, […]
‘‘It says willing or not. What do I opt for?” asked my mother, then a mere 18- year-old girl. The question was aimed at her brother who had accompanied her to the Employment Exchange. “Not.. means no. Negative. So say yes. Choose Willing,” was his advice to her and perhaps the most valuable one that […]
We always tend to classify our life into well-defined, sharply contoured pigeonholes: childhood – youth – middle age – old age.On a more practical and functional level, we divide this linear time into segments of education, professional life, marriage, parenthood, retirement and more. But what after that? All through our life, we move on with […]
Many a time we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations over and over again. Try as we might to deal with the past and bury it, some patterns keep repeating. At some point I came across an explanation for this phenomenon. Until you make peace with something or deal with it appropriately it refuses to go […]
In the mid 90s, Waheeda Rehman was negotiating a cusp in her life. After spending a few blissful decades in Bengaluru with husband Kanwaljit (with whom she had starred in the 1964 film Shagoon) in a sprawling hacienda called ‘Gharonda,’ raising two children, initiating an organic cereal brand with friend and neighbour Asharfa Sattar, she was […]
My emotions surrounding our move to the Pacific North West were not entirely pleasant. It seemed like I had just about perfected my rhythm in life when this blaring move came along and threw me out of balance. My blog was running along successfully. I had a part-time job that allowed me to balance work, […]
Has it ever happened to you that you are having a conversation with someone and even though both of you were speaking the same language you couldn’t really understand a word of what they were saying? Walls of cultural references, upbringing, experiences and age separate you. You could tell them what it was like to […]
The winds of change blow hard Rattling my windows Shaking every tree in my yard I flinch under the covers Frightened and sick. ** I try to shut out the howling storm But it will not be ignored One by one the windows shatter And my blanket of safety gets whipped up in the […]
So the new year was here and you wrote your resolutions and swore to stick by them only to find yourself stuck. Stuck with the same old, same old. Many of you started making changes and then found that your enthusiasm fizzled out and some of you haven’t found enough strength to take that first […]