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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In Marriage Story (now streaming on Netflix), there is a moment so infinitesimal that you can miss it if you just blink. A child caught between his politely but stubbornly adversarial parents, is seen playing with two toys in a quiet corner. And then he speaks as one toy to another, “I was falling and […]
Someone I know, recently shifted to an old age facility. Another resident, (in his nineties incidentally), asked her within days of her arrival , what languages she was conversant with. When she named Bengali in the list, he snapped, “I will report you to NRC people.” Hate you see gives a sense of purpose to […]
There is a telling scene in Ritesh Batra’s film Photograph (playing on Amazon). Two scenes in fact that mirror each other. In both, Miloni (Sanya Malhotra marvellously exuding a contained wistfulness) is at a shop to buy a dress. The first scene shows her standing noncommittally before a mirror while her sister and mother argue […]
Kabir Singh is not an anomaly. He is just the ultimate culmination of the privilege that male protagonists have enjoyed in Hindi cinema for a long time. Raj Kapoor slapped and manhandled Nargis in Awara (1956) because she playfully called him ‘Junglee.” But he had a messy, heartbreaking backstory so she had to rescue him […]
The hate around us is like the Amazon on fire. Instigated to scorch everything tender and infinitesimal. Random cruelties are as commonplace as laughter emojis and when genocides (silent as well as triumphantly boisterous), are taking place under our watch, it is hard to take the troubles of Modern Love seriously. The anthology web series, […]
Shah Rukh Khan does not make political statements.He does not say much about the state of the country he has seen become a bit snappy and rude and yes, intolerant over the decades. Aamir Khan tried to opine but learnt to then know better. These two are in a unique position unlike Salman Khan from […]
The urge to learn a new language breathes down my back the most when I realise how a treasure trove of heart-rending music remains beyond my reach. The Malayalam movie Mayaanadhi’s (2017) rendition of Bawra Mann (cue: Swanand Kirkire, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi) took me to Sachin Siby’s rendition of Kanmani Anbodhu, of which I understood […]
The most interesting thing about Imtiaz Ali’s Jab Harry Met Sejal is Shah Rukh Khan and the reimagining of Raj, the lover who knew he could not fail at life or love. The film shows us what would have happened if Raj had lost Simran after that fateful train journey through Europe and shrunk into […]
“Dear Calvin we miss u…” I woke up to those words today. Father’s status message on Whatsapp. Five words. They shook my heart and triggered a tsunami. A tsunami of memories. We place Calvin on the cold table. He pants, still gathers some strength to look around. He knows that place and we know he […]
“Job Offer” read the subject of an email I had been waiting to receive for over two months. I finally had a job in Bombay- a city I’d wanted to move to for two years. I was ecstatic, and then of course, terrified. You see, I have a special knack for always finding the bad […]
She plants lavender bushes on arid earth and keeps the soil moist, welcoming and fertile for thirsty seedlings. She is like the trees sheltering. And like the gardener nurturing. She knows the words the silences. Her hands build heal becalm soothe revive and remain invisible because she likes fading into serene margins. To never claim […]
Romeo Montague (Italian: Romeo Montecchi) is one of the title characters in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Romeo, the son of Montague and his wife, secretly loves and marries Juliet, a member of the rival House of Capulet. Forced into exile by his slaying of Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, in a duel, Romeo commits suicide […]