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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“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 […]
My mother was a great cook and indulged in cooking as a fetish. Ma was a magician too, adding that special sparkle to anything she touched. She could even snip a handful of wildly growing, wayward Amaranth leaves, tease them with fiery red chillies, team them with un-skinned potatoes, turn them over in an iron […]
22-August is celebrated as Madras Day. A tribute to the city I love.. The black cow is heavily pregnant. She walks into the lane where we live. Our 400 square feet box is the first house. With a large writing pad on my lap, I am sitting at the threshold. My pen is in mouth, ‘complex’ maths in […]
As I leafed through some old albums, I came across a photo of my grand father sitting on his battered teakwood chair. The chair had hosted multiple generations of children, grand- children across genders, age groups. The chair stayed in the semi open living room area and that was where my grand father would supervise […]
All I see is red. Urgent and arresting red. The blinking lights on the road red. Her hair in the wind red. Molten rage and dry wine red. Wrinkled sheets and horror-filled dreams red. Bonfire embers and crossed out ledgers Demanding a pound of flesh. A rose in a book to remember, A shirt […]
“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 […]
The powder puff has more dust sticking to it than the familiar smelling particles of Ponds talcum powder. The fragrance is as familiar to me as the hemmed borders of the electric blue printed frock that I used to wear almost every alternate day. The scorching summers would not allow room for sartorial experiments. Back […]
There is a scene in Bimal Roy’s Bandini where Nutan’s Kalyani is described as Annapurna…the goddess of an abundant kitchen. She is half in love with a rebel (Ashok Kumar) who comes every evening to discuss lyrical poetry with her father and enjoys her cooking but it is when he describes her as a woman […]
His lips quivered and tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks as he held the yellowing piece of paper close to his heart. Memories of the love of his life flashed in his mind forcing a ghost of a smile to linger on his face. He read once again the note she had given him on […]
During my school days my father would never get the names of my friends correct. And this was especially so whenever Sriparna and Suparna were mentioned in conversations. “Kaun? woh gori wali?” (Who, that fair one?) he would ask trying to distinguish one from the other based on their skin tones. In reply I […]
Boxes strike terror in my heart, the ones crammed with books and papers in particular. I will procrastinate sorting them until pushed to the wall. It is not that I am lazy or disorganized; I am just scared of hurting. And so the black containers sit scratchy and sore like corns on the toes, darkly […]
Hard to tell if memory inhabits me or I inhabit memories ** of magazines lining my mothers tin trunks smelling of the 70s and recipes of apple fritters songs on radio a window seat that opened to dreamscapes painting themselves in my head life that went on flowing unabated through everything .. memories of homes […]