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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Today I find myself at the park again but this time I brought a pen and some paper so I don’t need to struggle with the tiny keyboard on my phone. So many emotions. So many thoughts. So many things that I want to put down on paper. They keep swimming around in my consciousness […]
“What should I wear for the wedding?” Sam asked me, when we were on our way to buy clothes for our friend’s wedding. Without thinking, I said he should wear a white shirt and a pair of beige trousers. Louise Phillipe was his favourite brand. We picked up a beautiful white shirt from a Louise Phillipe […]
I often check my desires. They are often indicative of things I do not want. This desire to leave everything behind stems more from my need to run away from things, people, than from a need to actually be in a new place. That can’t be right, can it? It’s like wanting to marry so […]
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 […]
I did not know Valsa Mathew but sometimes, you do not need to know a person too well to imbibe instantly and with absolute certainty that there is something very special about her. I first saw Valsa nearly a decade or so ago when accompanied by my mother, I went to her son Vivek Mathew’s […]
The cherry blossom-laden mind, Sways to the music, Of the, nonchalant wind, Painted in dreams, hopes, Of memories left behind, A few petals disembark, into realms wistful, A few soar, Some plummet, Others open their dewy eyes, Blush in sunshine, Gone, are the dreary winter mornings, Gone is the mist, The darkness, Once seemingly unending, So now we smile unafraid, And […]
”There was never anything wrong with keeping up a little optimism over the flood.” That line from Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter arrested my attention when I was reading the book by candlelight a week ago. It was a dark week in many senses. My beloved city was flooded, making thousands of people homeless. […]
In my home in Patiala, I had designed a little wall ornament with painted cherries and a quote, ”Enough is as good as a feast.” That statement comes back to me at the end of each year when I take stock of not what I earned but what I learned over a span of 365 days. […]
Times were dark. As I swallowed the last set of my antidepressants one night, I texted my friend, “I don’t think I can refill my meds for the next two days. I am going to be super anxious.” She worked out all possibilities to refill my pills; sadly, her efforts ended in vain. I was okay for […]
Avoid. Delay. Procrastinate. Distract. Quit. Run. This is what I do when things don’t go my way. It’s always easier than confronting the problems. Or so I thought till I learned it the hard way. I ran away to Pondicherry to do my M.S. thinking that my problems would stay behind in Chennai. But […]
A lot of free time tends to lead to a lot of self reflection, and though I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, today seemed like a good day to put up this post. I remember this time last year, while preparing for an entrance that I thought was the most important exam […]
“May I be protector for those without one, A guide for all travellers on the way;” ~ Shantideva, in A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. The gorgeous Goan monsoon is washing my windows squeaky clean, and as I’m lying around in bed, I’m suddenly thinking of Sealdah railway station. I was there just […]