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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”There was never anything wrong with keeping up a little optimism over the flood.” That line from Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter arrested my attention when I was reading the book by candlelight a week ago. It was a dark week in many senses. My beloved city was flooded, making thousands of people homeless. […]
Can’t drive, don’t have a job and hanging on to the last shred of sanity. That pretty much describes my situation today. And I’ve been there before – in some other place, at some other time in my life. And it is a scary place to be. What’s even scarier is the belief that you […]
“May I be protector for those without one, A guide for all travellers on the way;” ~ Shantideva, in A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. The gorgeous Goan monsoon is washing my windows squeaky clean, and as I’m lying around in bed, I’m suddenly thinking of Sealdah railway station. I was there just […]
Here are a few pages from the diary of an anxious soul. Though she prefers anonymity, the thoughts she pens down resonates with many of us. Over to her: As I sit on my desk without any work at the moment, I fear that is it because they don’t want to keep me here. I […]
Dear Reader, I have always loved letters but in my 22 years and 11 months of existence, I have only received two letters and written one. When I was younger, I’d write long letters on the back of my notebooks namely to anybody I knew back home, then I’d carefully re-write them, tuck them into […]
Success is so overrated in a world where mere survival is a great gift. Robin Williams’ recent suicide proves once again that just success is not enough to keep us all afloat and yet we celebrate success more than the courage it takes for ordinary people to keep going regardless of the hardships life throws […]
She stared back at me. Deep, dark eyes. Mixed with fear and uncertainty, blended in anticipation and hope. Tried to speak. But something stopped her. A force, a faint shadow loomed behind her. It held her rigidly, yet not tightly. Her struggle pushed her back slightly, but she stood there. Waiting to be seen, waiting to reveal the shadow. […]
The heaviness grows with the weight of a thousand years Weary of fighting the same old wars Eyes unfocused and shoulders drooping We trudge together not in triumph But in struggle Some fall behind But a few march on Will we be greeted by victory? Or crushed by defeat? We do not know yet […]
Religion is a just a life jacket But in a storm you need more ** Not all storms come to destroy Not all islands offer refuge ** God is not a ritual Evil is not outside The terrors we see around us often begin within ** Even when we are adrift we are getting somewhere […]
It is not easy, to love yourself, when you seem unimportant and seem to not contribute to a life It is not easy, to believe in yourself, if you are not doing anything apparently meaningful It is not easy, to see that, what you’ve built your entire life on, is a shaky foundation ready to crumble anytime It […]
It was my destiny, fate, luck or karma; call it whatever you like that brought me to Mumbai – a city which horrified me from the very beginning. A city known for almost all the wrong reasons- riots, floods, crime and the underworld. A million other atrocities plague this city which proudly calls itself ‘the […]