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…
Read More
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…
Read More
“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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
You are browsing archives for
In The Dirty Picture (2011), she played the hero, the heroine, the vamp and the victim who lives the bitter truth, “Zindagi jab mayus hoti hai..tabhi mehsoos hoti hai.” In Kahaani (2012), she was not just a vengeful mother goddess but also Mahabharata’s Krishna and Arjuna and the mainstream hero with a woman’s body. Someone […]
So how dirty is dirty on Indian television? A censored film is not sanitised enough for family audiences but home grown crime shows are? Especially the ones where in the guise of educating viewers about the dangers lurking in every neighbourhood and dark corner, gang rapes are recreated, victims are shown pleading for mercy as […]
It is fitting that an overview of this year’s most memorable films should begin with a conversation about The Dirty Picture. This film is a triumph because of three people. Director Milan Luthria. Dialogue writer Rajat Arora and Vidya Balan. Earlier this year, a strident PR campaign pegged Rani Mukherjee’s foul mouthed scribe in No One […]
I remember coming across a billboard during one of my road trips which had “Sex,” in big bold letters, written all over it. However, the sentence that followed read, “Now, that we have your attention, let us remind you about the polio drive!” Clearly, the advertiser knew that the S word would guarantee a lot […]
“Zindagi mayoos hoti hai tabhi mehsoos hoti hai,” is the final footnote of The Dirty Picture where a spent force of nature after having lived crazy dreams and nightmares, dizzying flights and spiralling lows, finds peace. Not the kind we would have wished for her but the kind that comes after life has been lived […]