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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Dad always says, “Murda-parasto ki duniya” (the world only appreciates the dead).India mourned a very significant loss sometime back, that of Dr. Abdul Kalaam Azad (APJ), scientist, former President and a great teacher. I read the news while I was scrolling through my phone in a movie (I do that to escape the boring […]
“Javed bhai, hum Dilli haar gaye hain!” (We have lost Delhi), yells Naseeruddin Shah as a violently bitter sepoy in Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (1978). That scene is hard to forget. As is the fact that it was on the sets of Junoon that Shah first met Ismat Chughtai, one of the bravest literary and […]
“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome. Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death,” so said Robin Williams in Patch Adams (1998). ** Who else but Williams with a clown’s nose and a philosopher’s wisdom […]
“Murda Paraston ki Duniya” , is perhaps my father’s favourite line. Loosely translated it would mean, “this is a world where the dead are greatly appreciated.” Over the years, I have come to believe that this is in fact true. It’s amazing how an untimely death can propel you to win a posthumous Oscar or […]