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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Emotions sometimes seem so unnecessary. The thoughts, the fears, the assumptions, the pre-suppositions, the questions which play with our thought processes and create an unnecessary noise, distract silence and keep our minds constantly busy. Not to forget the need for ‘dramatisation’ that a normal person is taught from his childhood. When a person is hurt, his first reaction should be a […]
I feel woolly in the head, often. It’s a light, airy feeling, of a benevolent happy detachment, if pushed to analyse. Those are silent, reflective moments I break free in, to float away from the immediate so I can observe the circus in action, all around. I watch the cast, you and me and those […]
To me.. small things are big a kernel is a tree already a tree..is a meadow a meadow..is spring and spring..all of life and everything is just one thing that path strewn with yellow flowers the roof top baking in the sun red chillies on carts dogs by the roadside cats on window sills that lake […]
Note: I have had the privilege to interview theatre personality and actor Arundhati Nag many times over a decade or more and this piece recalls many conversations about her life and work. You saw her award winning turn in Pa recently and even if she comes for a few seconds in an advertisement, you know, […]
She has been sitting on that parapet wall for an hour now. She gazes out at a landscape that isn’t exactly a great view but it is a view to her nevertheless. There is a wide open ground. At the very far end of that ground, she sees a few shanties where labourers live and […]
A-walking, a-humming, The road stretches on, Your twenty-dollar bill, Crumbling in your fingers, Whistling a concerto, You heard long ago, Playing in a dream, Or playing in your head, How does it matter When you won’t ever be dead? Down to your last penny, And you throw it away On a man who says He […]
“The only thing in life that’s constant is change.” As cliched as that may sound, it’s the only cliche that’s always valid. Think about it. You assume you will always be with your school friends. After all they are the ones who consoled you after your first heartbreak, whose house you could enter anytime of […]
For years I have woken up, with the sun shining by my side, Watched myself in the mirror, dressed, bathed, looked better everyday, Chosen colours to wear, pinned my hair to let nothing but my work abide, Drove past the hush and rush of lives, as they flew past me with the clock’s pace, Against the volatile heart, my mind waged a war, […]
Passion is something that one follows in spite of adverse conditions. It is a drive that is constantly at work, irrespective of circumstances, difficulties or odds. A lukewarm desire which fails or keeps deviating with time and obstacles can hardly be called as passion. Passion largely succeeds; if it doesn’t, it becomes an under […]
Have you pondered a sudden unexpected end? Nothing is unchanged. The clothes lie in the same wardrobe, those socks are in the dryer, the book they were reading is still lying with the bookmark on page 259. That shirt on the door smells of their perfume. But no person to turn the page, wear […]
So many questions I ask myself every day, About right and wrong, On how to decide what right is, and what is wrong, Since the moment the alarm strikes a chord, Till the moment my senses fade and drop, Questions of ‘how’s and ‘when’s, Of how to answer a question with a ‘no’ ? And if I […]
When the lights flood the dusty space above a wooden platform, the darkness beyond its length, from where applause comes as a storm, the boundaries of lines and curves, within which art unfolds on-stage, as the colors of make-up, and volumes of wigs and costumes define a character’s cage, the aesthetics of art, rubbed upon each […]