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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Every Bangalorean has a Church Street memory. From NASA, the grounded spaceship cum pub in the mid nineties to RR restaurant which was supposedly the favourite of Raj Kapoor for its Gongura chutney, avakai pickle, gunpowder and the secret recipes from Guntur and Nellore that sang to you from a plantain leaf. Dahlia, the little Japanese eatery […]
We believe that God made this Universe and populated our World with His creatures including his masterful creation, humankind. Strangely, we also believe that He then called all those he had made in his own image and said, “I now pronounce you Hindu and Muslim. And Jew and Christian and Buddhist and Jain and Sikh.” […]
Ever wondered why disaster movies show iconic architectural landmarks crumbling to pieces? Why terrorist attacks target buildings that stand for something more than just brick and mortar? Why September 11 was not just about a terrorist attack but a terrorist attack on the beating heart of New York? Why 26/11 was not just about […]
I wish the world had ended in December 2012. The cause for this pessimism is the recent terrorist attack that hit Nairobi. To sum it up, for those who haven’t been in the loop, militants attacked this plush mall, Westgate, in the heart of the city with bombs, grenades and subsequent firing. The cause? As illogical […]
We recall Black Friday, perhaps the most perfect film in Anurag Kashyap’s oeuvre, timeless and relevant still because of what it says and the righteous rage it exhibits against the failures that allow intolerance to thrive. There is a 12-minute chase scene in the first half of Black Friday between a few police men and a […]
What is the meaning of a republic? Is it a selectively amnesiac entity where bull dozers run over and flatten the lives and dignity and pets and homes and belongings of the poor while builders advertise gated communities protected from the “noise and the pollution” of the big metros for the benefit of those they […]
And so the 20-something terrorist was hanged to death this week and the question remains. Does capital punishment resolve, solve anything? Does it bring real closure? And who are we to judge whether a criminal, no matter how hardened and beyond redemption deserves to live or die? Who are we also to judge people […]
A knock at the door and they both were shaken to death; a chill ran through their spines. They dreaded any knock at their door. But they knew it would come – a knock at the door – and with it the final word. And today it came….. A shriek, loud, yet restricted and subdued, […]
Sometime in 2006, United 93, a taut, almost unemotional account of the fourth hijacked plane that did not reach its destination on the morning of September 11 , 2001 hit the theatres. What moved me about the film was its intention to not manipulate the emotions of viewers who had on one terrible morning learnt […]
Pic by Kunal Karan Kapoor Sometimes, the merest thing can trigger off memories- an image, a sound, the whiff of a perfume. I recently viewed a photograph of Mumbai….endless tall buildings, a grey snaking road and a bird soaring in the sky and there I was transported back to my favourite city. I was suddenly that bird…..free, […]
Many many decades ago as a young girl in a small town, I remember reading a cover story on film maker, artist and writer Imtiaz Dharker with growing admiration. She was someone who had battled great odds to acquire personal and creative freedom. I wanted to grow up to be like her. A few years later, […]
Terror is not a body count in a news report or a headline for those who have lived through it or lost a loved one to it. It is the twitch of a lost limb, the memory of a loved face and a sense of random victimhood and the question, why it had to be […]