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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Dancer Amy Yakima and choreographer Travis Wall danced breathtakingly to a song called Wicked Game (performed by James Vincent McMorrow and written by Chris Isaak) in one unforgettable season of So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) and the highlight of the performance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ0QrJaPFcQ) was a gravity defying leap where Amy just flew into Travis’ arms while […]
It is hard for directors to treat Hrithik Roshan as ‘normal.’ He is either Jalluddin Mohammed Akbar or Krish or a vaguely challenged Rohit or an ace thief who can be a dwarf, a queen in drag, a superman vrooming to the beat of ‘Dhoom..dhoom‘ or a self-made chawl don spouting Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s Agnipath […]
Every film loving generation in India has had a definitive Hindi film heroine. Suraiya was possibly India’s first female superstar and was a perfect fit for the cinema of 40s and the 50s that was rich with Urdu poetry and elemental stories of passion and sacrifice. She was the reigning queen of the developing Talkie […]
There was a bit of Yash Chopra in every one of his heroes. Like some of them he believed in an ever-after. In the integrity of emotion. Whether that emotion was hate etched like a tattoo on a wrist or anger over the betrayal of a father. Or lost love that a poet mourned […]
The nation is outraged over the Guwahati incident. At least we are meant to believe this, if we are to go by the antics of hysterical TV anchors. And so? What is going to follow now? Outrage is a distraction. It lasts as long as the next one comes along. We will soon have something even […]
Katrina Kaif as a rock star (She struts in slow motion towards the camera in crazy boots, with smoke curling out of her lips, strumming a guitar). Katrina Kaif as another version (there have been many) of Geet in Jab We Met, ready to elope in the dead of the night with a phrase about […]
In Barsaat, yes, all the way back in 1949, when Raj Kapoor and Prem Nath went to the hills in a car, braving the wind and perhaps egged by boredom, they ran into love, tragedy, heartbreak and a life lesson or two. There have been many memories on wheels, intrinsic to narratives like Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi but why are we digressing? In 2001, […]