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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On a routine day in a mall, while browsing for gifts for a friend, I heard shots..or crackers. It is hard to tell the difference but considering the world we live in, the mind begins to replay inexplicable campus and mall shootings, 26/11, stories of people running for their lives in the middle of a […]
I have imagined, often, what it must feel like, to die. Do I gradually lose awareness of my body, one part at a time and slip away? Do I become excruciatingly aware of it as the mind recedes and the life force that I am makes its presence known? Is it painful? Is it relieving? […]
There is something sickening and violating about the way Sunanda Pushkar’s life and death are being played out round the clock on our TV screens. Her voice, images, letters, life and death make for compulsively watchable television. One channel even played an “exclusive” mobile camera footage of the suite where […]
There is no easy way to understand death but when it comes after prolonged suffering, it brings with it release for the one who departs. It leaves behind a sense of emptiness because a life has ended. It leaves behind the fullness of grief that in time finds solace in a sense of closure. There […]
Life is shrinking every day. Each day death defeats life and conquers the span life claims it to be hers. This is a movement. Call it living or dying. It is not a war but we may make one of it. By complaining, by cribbing, by pushing too hard against life, by being adamant […]
I read somewhere, “Nothing should live that isn’t a labour of great, great love.” But seriously, if nothing should live that isn’t a labour of great love, how come the people and things that are, sometimes vanish into the mist of time? It’s nothing you haven’t contemplated before. There ought to be some place beyond, a […]
During my school days my father would never get the names of my friends correct. And this was especially so whenever Sriparna and Suparna were mentioned in conversations. “Kaun? woh gori wali?” (Who, that fair one?) he would ask trying to distinguish one from the other based on their skin tones. In reply I […]
Ordinary life is hard enough to manage. How much harder would fame be? Too much of it? Too little of it? What must it be like to be watched constantly, measured, estimated, valued for what is visible in you? To smile at hundreds of cameras and then come home to maybe an imperfect life that […]
Time’s overreaching as life murmurs to a close, A dialogue left incomplete before the season’s changed, Forced shut before the year drew out. Stripped of age and run dry of an era, An element of emptiness dripping down On those left behind. And the firmament sends waves like whispers up To fill your open […]
(Author’s note: This is not a work of fiction. But then, who can define reality anyway?)I was eating a cheesecake and a banoffee pie with my husband when one of the most important people in my life was on the verge of suffering a massive stroke. I was making one of my favourite sambars when […]
“The Indian Railway’s Second AC has lost its elitist air,” Harshal told himself irritably. Elbowing his way into his assigned seat, he glared at the passengers already settled in. They wore that shifty eyed look of proprietary, typical of wait-listed Indians. He rolled his eyes at the pedestrian domesticity surrounding him, cursing the college alumni association for advancing […]
On the day of her Shradh, everything is normal. The maids come and go, people go to work, children go to school, the trains and the buses struggle to run on time; the sun rises, it will rise to its highest position at noon, and then disappear, letting the moon take over. It is just […]