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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A 13-year old school girl from Bangalore went missing recently and was found in Hubli. I do not know the family personally, but the incident had me thinking really hard because I too am a mother. I feel, today all stake holders in the education system are facing a serious challenge. Parents, teachers and the society have […]
“My Dad always wore the pants in the family,” shared Avika, my buddy. She is married and expects her husband to do the same. She avoids confrontations and standing up for herself. She is a people pleaser. She is even willing to give up her high-paying job and her identity to get the affirmation from her man. When I […]
It was a dark and stormy night. Expectedly, there had been a power failure in the neighbourhood. A few houses were quiet while raucous singing erupted from others as each little family dealt with the situation in their individual ways. Transistors belted songs from old Hindi films and the sounds and smells of cooking became […]
Cars…. I mean, toy cars. So many of them, in many a colours, in many sizes, strewn all over the house, in each and every room. Some under a bed or a cabinet, some enjoying the weather in the balcony, some in the washroom awaiting a bath, and very few in their rightful designated place, i.e. […]
I always wondered what would be like to be a boy and to be in a world, where the freedom and choices seemed to be limitless. Where the deadline-free timings left one free to do whatever one wished at all kinds of crazy hours. Where the clothes one wore or […]
Just recently, I penned a post about how parents could do their bit against the Rape Culture in raising children to be more sensitive and empathetic. The Chetan Bhagat tweet saga on Twitter was a classic example to the contrary. Mr Bhagat tweeted, “The Rupee is asking, is there no punishment for my rapists ?” […]
It is interesting how parents teach kids to hate and despise anything that hurts them rather than reason out that this too is a part of life. While I waited for by delayed flight back home, I saw a child -two or three years old, whose legs got stuck in the chair. The kid was shocked and screeched […]
Whoever said women were permitted only one act in a lifetime? Do 20 extra kilos, scars of an invasive surgery, dental implants and some somnolent muscles mean you are done for in this life? Would it be fair to say that you are now past your peak and prime, having discharged your primary obligations of […]
An ideal society should be class-less and caste-less, that is understandable, but is it right or even possible to build a society that has no family structure at all? What would be desirable – abolishing the family unit or a fundamental change in it? Social structures based on Caste or Class are either a religious […]
I have been watching the skin on the back of my mother’s hands very closely. In consonance with the changing texture and folds of skin, there has grown in my head a sketch of what it means to watch one’s parent get on in years. There was a time when the hand was smooth and unblemished. […]
The other day, I picked a fridge magnet that read; ‘Mirror mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all’. I liked the line; I liked the quirky design of the magnet. But most of all, the line hit home. My Amma and I, like I often say, are poles apart. We have nothing in […]
My grandmother lived by one abiding dictum, “Daughters must never be left alone anywhere, overnight.” She was obsessive about Mom’s friends and rationed her rare friendly visits to the last minute. In fact, she is known to have chucked a pair of scissors at her once, over a five minutes delay, returning home from a […]