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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Around 12 years ago, I travelled for hours to a lesser known neighbourhood in Bangalore to find and interview Manna Dey. He lived on the first floor of an independent home and it was probably a rented space.and there were really no flourishes of fame and legendary success anywhere. ** This was a middle-class home […]
Journeys are beautiful. Calming, subtle, silently running along like a film on your window frame. Different scenes painting the road side, living for a short while and before you realize..gone. You sit back, listen to your favourite songs and watch out for what life portrays next. A guitar strum, a hidden harmony, and the vivid […]
Music is a popular topic of debate in drawing room conversations, considering how conspicuously present it is at most get-togethers where music trivia begins to come out of your ears, after a while. Often, my heart goes out to the unsuspecting souls who have somehow managed to hold on to their romanticism about their kind of “good music,” only to innocently offer it to pontificating snobs for demolition on evenings like […]
When the sixties swung into the seventies to the beat of RD Burman’s Spanish guitar and Amitabh Bachchan’s angst, in retrospect, it was the end of the happy endings in Hindi cinema. 20 years into independence, the political reality of India had become far more complex, dark and divisive to allow films to be set on house boats, shikaras, […]
The thing about the past is that it never comes back and yet never really leaves. Shamshad Begum for instance is not just a Wikipedia note with a birthday and a death day. She is a memory for those of us who grew up with her songs. Though for all purposes, the woman who sang […]
In a world where a random shooting spree can take away 20 young lives in a school, what do we need from not just our law makers, law enforcers, politicians but our musicians, artists, writers, film makers? Through the ages, the arts have been the humans spirit’s escape from intolerance and violence. For cinema, music, […]
*** Winter evenings might be getting colder in Delhi now, but the festival circuit is surely hotting up. With a string of art and culture festivals lined up this season, where else would one want to be but in the capital city? From next Friday till Sunday, all roads will lead to the majestic […]
Pic By the author Our lives are not in a constant even flow. There are troughs and crests interspersed with the routine business of living. While the crests are easy to ride- being as they are about intense happiness, success, joy et all, it’s the troughs which get us down and out. Unhappiness, grief, or […]
My metro rides are often accompanied by books or music. Reading about a woman’s struggle against an oppressive society within the comforts of an air-conditioned Ladies’ coach in the train or listening to Manna Dey’s ‘Zindagi Kaisi hai Paheli Hai’ while the surrounding crowd grooves to the beats of ‘Yeh Saali Zindagi, ’ I often find […]
So David Guetta played at the HUDA grounds in Delhi. The crowd? Well, there were girls in formal gowns. I imagined what they must have said to each other before dressing formal. “C’mon we are going for a live concert, you know what that means? Pull out that gown I wore to Shilu’s reception! Yes, […]
The beat of drums, leads the thumping of my heart, The clouds bursting against one another; awaken the heart with a start, The flute pumps waves of melody seamlessly into the air, Peacocks dance in the rhythmic rains, as love pours down, along with streams of care, The strings of violins, invoke memories of love and […]
You reach out and caress my neck And look magnificent in glimpses I twirl but poise eludes me There is no sense of gravity.. My eyes can’t keep up with you Though the heart leaps, matching your feet Wrap your arms around me and glide in poetry I have waited and longed To one day be swept […]