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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One Wednesday morning, as I dashed towards the elevator to leave for office, I was already too late. The elevator had just one other occupant. A short, fair and beautiful young woman with a glittering bindi. She smiled at me and I returned the favour and tried to recall where I had seen her last and then it occurred to […]
“The girl looks alright, is a classical dancer preparing for her first stage performance, works as a teacher, earns a decent salary. When she met us she said she would continue performing on stage if the extended family permits else would give up dancing. She also said that after marriage she would continue to […]
We are told how to be happy in a million different ways by a million people and the options are boggling. There are many different ways to be happy but just a few simple ones to be unhappy. Here are a few simple tricks to be unhappy and achieve a gloomy, sloppy, sagging soul. Beat yourself […]
I have spent a few years using the Law of Attraction and know for sure that it works. But I have not been able to break it down to a science because it works in mysterious ways that defy definition. The first step in manifesting anything is to ask. Get really clear about what you […]
The other day I was caught in a downpour or maybe I caught it. I could have walked back into the office but then there is something I would have missed. The feeling of being stoic and vulnerable together. Of not being insulated from experiences that make us human and real. A long time ago, […]
When you are a girl of about eight, and you tell your parents and relatives that you want to be a police woman, you get a pat on your back and a smile, but fast forward the same statement by 10 years, and the smile disappears into a smirk and you hear, ‘You’re a girl […]
Cars…. I mean, toy cars. So many of them, in many a colours, in many sizes, strewn all over the house, in each and every room. Some under a bed or a cabinet, some enjoying the weather in the balcony, some in the washroom awaiting a bath, and very few in their rightful designated place, i.e. […]
It is true what they say – beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. The scene outside the window rarely changed. Whether it seemed verdant, misty and beautiful or simply bleak depended on her state of mind. Today, it appeared bleak. Maybe it was the old nostalgic songs that brought up memories of the […]
Humans love symmetry. From quantum physics, to the reasons we find people attractive, everything is linked to symmetry. Even our own bodies are bilaterally symmetrical. Our brains are roughly symmetrical. Funnily enough, our hearts are not. (Note, all you medical students calling me a crazy person who knows nothing about anything, I’m talking about a […]
You have a fancy job. You have cool friends. You have a family that visits occasionally and you therefore feel you are in touch with them. You also have a vehicle to get around the city, you have a pay cheque that pays for unnecessary expenses like ready-made ginger-garlic paste, an extra skillet, more than two […]
Note: I met Aoife Mannix in 2007..the memories still linger though..of her robust world-view, her radiant poetry. After Aoife Mannix’s revolution changes the world, there will never be any wars because, “bullets will bounce where they come from, leaving no scars, just a trail of jelly beans.” Soldiers will only wear birthday suits. There will […]
Many many decades ago as a young girl in a small town, I remember reading a cover story on film maker, artist and writer Imtiaz Dharker with growing admiration. She was someone who had battled great odds to acquire personal and creative freedom. I wanted to grow up to be like her. A few years later, […]