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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‘‘It says willing or not. What do I opt for?” asked my mother, then a mere 18- year-old girl. The question was aimed at her brother who had accompanied her to the Employment Exchange. “Not.. means no. Negative. So say yes. Choose Willing,” was his advice to her and perhaps the most valuable one that […]
As you turn a young 82, am writing this, dear Amma, to celebrate eight decades of your life and to wish you many more years of good health, happiness and peace. To acknowledge the rich experience and wisdom that you have gained from the joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, successes and failures that came your way and […]
The only part that can be appropriately labelled as ‘excruciating’ in a 3.5 week vacation home (India), is perhaps the 20+ hours spent cooped up in an air-plane or counting crows during layovers. An 8 hour flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, wandering aimlessly through the occluded corridors of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport before boarding the next […]
For most of my childhood years, I believed with a certain unwavering conviction (that only kids are known to possess), that Papa was no different than one of my bicycle riding, hop-scotch playing, squeals of joy producing little friends. There was something very light hearted and guileless about him that appealed immensely to us kiddies. […]
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 […]
Once there was a little girl who was perfect in every way. Beautiful, smart, loving and kind. Her parents loved her until their next child arrived and then the next and the next. Before she knew it she had to grow up and take care of herself all at the age of five. And when […]
Summer vacations had finally begun and 15- year- old Mala was glad to be one of the lucky ones in her group of friends who would be escaping the sordid Bhopal heat. Her parents had finally decided to take the long overdue vacation to Bangalore and they were all set to spend a glorious summer […]
In a way, it was easier when you were chubby babies. Your needs were of the moment, simple to satisfy. An ice cream cone was all it took to turn the blue moments sunny. But I knew it even as you licked at the cone that these straightforward days would not last. A day would […]
“My son just doesn’t listen to me. Every day we argue about petty things. I just don’t know how to handle that teenager of mine. Now I know what my mother must have gone through…..” was the frantic cry of a mother on the other end of the phone. I made suitable soothing noises but […]
I don’t think in images. When I close my eyes, I see faceless people composed entirely of words and emotion dressed in sentences and punctuation. Story-less phrases flit across my eyelids, there one moment and forgotten the next. Feelings sit in boxes in the corner of my mind, fermenting, until they are more concentrated than […]
There was a quote in my father’ medical book that I don’t quite remember anymore. I remember faintly that under the pretty, pretty picture I painted for him on the front page of the book, there had been words that spoke about caring for children. That in the reflection of my father’s glasses as he […]
Writer Rani Rao Innes pens an insightful three-part story about the need for freedom and the desire for roots, exclusively for the readers of Unboxed Writers. “Are you out of your mind?” Maya was looking at her with a mixture of concern and exasperation. They were sitting in the little balcony of Maya’s flat sipping chai […]