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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Radhika was spoilt for choice when it came to clothes, accessories and almost everything else she wanted. She was the pampered wife of a millionaire who went on endless business trips around the globe in search of better deals and more money. They owned a lot wealth and led a lavish life; an outsider could […]
In the mid 90s, Waheeda Rehman was negotiating a cusp in her life. After spending a few blissful decades in Bengaluru with husband Kanwaljit (with whom she had starred in the 1964 film Shagoon) in a sprawling hacienda called ‘Gharonda,’ raising two children, initiating an organic cereal brand with friend and neighbour Asharfa Sattar, she was […]
Overly critical of ourselves, we are often busy either keeping up with the latest fads or working hard at refuting them. Every woman I know is fighting her own battle to break some kind of societal convention. I usually find myself at war with the concept of “what is good and right?” versus “what society […]
“Almost all your blogs talk about work,” my daughter declared a few weeks ago. I mildly protested but then it struck me that she was right. The years since I started blogging have been devoted to finding work, finding my passion, quitting jobs, moving and trying to find work again. At times I was under […]
Maybe it’s the hormones or the overcast skies that are a regular feature of this part of the world. Maybe it’s my inability to get a decent job. Dang it! I blame all of the above for pushing me into this limbo. Winter blues hit me bad when I was in Boston and now […]
Dear Reader, I have always loved letters but in my 22 years and 11 months of existence, I have only received two letters and written one. When I was younger, I’d write long letters on the back of my notebooks namely to anybody I knew back home, then I’d carefully re-write them, tuck them into […]
What is the value of a person whose dawn breaks on streets or railway stations who sips tea at dingy canteens each day whose sells scrap to live who sleeps under an empty sky Who is he in the city of dreams? I don’t know. Perhaps he is a mascot of disparity, inequality of empty […]
I remember a time when I hated sitting around doing nothing. My days had to be packed with things to do, places to go, people to meet or I felt like I would go crazy. And somewhere along the way I had to make peace with having too much time and too little to do. […]
Someone suggested I watch The Fault In Our Stars for a change of perspective. Instead I watched the movie to be reminded of something I believed in but had forgotten about. Pain demands to be felt. It is easier to fall into someone else’s arms at the end of a relationship. It is easier to find […]
A lot of advertising revolves around the horrors of growing old. They remind you again and again, your face needs to defy age. There are serums and potions out there that can erase signs of ageing. Magazines tell you how to fight cellulite. How to get rid of the muffin top belly. How to work […]
We see what we want or perhaps need to see in cinema, in music, in the books we read, the people we meet. On days we are open to life, we see even the yellow butterfly flitting past the auto, the way a pink bloom falls on a car bonnet from a neglected tree, how […]
Atul Gawande`s Being Mortal (Penguin Books) cuts rather too close to the family bone, so an impersonal review is difficult. To rage or not to rage against the dying light? That is what the author asks in this book. Dr Gawande, author of a set of very thought-provoking books like Complications, Better and The Checklist Manifesto, tackles […]