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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I was recently writing an article about genetics and came across the nature versus nurture theory. I’ve heard of it before but never applied it to my life, until now. You see I have been fighting nature and possibly nurture all my life. My Dad and I have a lot in common. We are both […]
Being born an Indian means inheriting a big book of rules, principles and society norms as soon as we are born. We are taught from an early age that our behaviour reflects our family’s reputation and status, to listen and obey is considered a sign of goodness, to compromise and sustain a bad relationship is […]
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 […]
“Quit your job, sit at home and hunt for another one. Every part of your soul which seemed lost will come back to you. No need to hunt for it,” was my brother’s response when I brought up ‘Soul Searching’. ** He’s right, right to an extent that it can be used as a ‘quotable […]
Emptiness no matter how crowded life is with things and people… and what do I do with this silence that I hear even when so many voices are ringing? so many stand by my side …yet why do I feel I’ll fall ? so many answers everywhere but why is that one question missing to […]
The other day I was caught in a downpour or maybe I caught it. I could have walked back into the office but then there is something I would have missed. The feeling of being stoic and vulnerable together. Of not being insulated from experiences that make us human and real. A long time ago, […]
I watch her as she adjusts the cushions on her bed, wraps the blanket around her little body, hugs her teddy tight and looks at me eagerly and asks ‘Won’t you come to bed with me Mamma’. I lie next to her in bed, my face resting on the side of her shoulder, her tiny […]
Sometime last month, artist Milind Nayak was admitted in a hospital for blood infection and dangerously high creatinine levels. “I almost reached the pearly gates but the doctors pulled me back,” he says. Milind went through dialysis and was not even conscious of all the medical procedures done to bring him back from the brink […]
Nestled in a cane casket, hung a foot or two above the ground, and wrapped in embroidered cotton cloth, the baby slept peacefully. This is a rare sight to see and that’s why it caught my attention amongst the many other photographs displayed in an art and culture magazine. Times have changed. ** Recently, I […]
I am using the present continuous tense here instead of the past tense, because I feel I lose something every day. This past year I have won a lot of trophies and also lost a lot of relationships. And while victories have taught me about hope and faith, it is the loses that have […]
Freedom is raising your hands to the sky and saying, “I am done.” Freedom is running on the beach, falling and saying, “This is it.” Freedom is listening to a tune, weeping and saying, “This is all.” Freedom is letting the waves wash your feet and saying, “You washed my miseries away.” Freedom is sitting […]
What is it that binds one human-being to another? The thread of empathy, recognition that the other is not the other after all but part of the same human experience? Their pain is not theirs alone? That their joy is also yours? Because as poet Shahid Kabir once said poignantly, “Galiyon galiyon jiska charcha hai..woh […]