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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“Agar Firdaus bar rōy-e zamin ast, hamin ast-o hamin ast-o hamin ast.” If there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.That’s what Persian poet Amir Khusrau, said of Kashmir in 13th Century.Fast-forward to now and this is what I heard from friends and acquaintances: “There’s a constant sense of […]
I have been weathering a storm since last year. So, I have been blogging about how unfair, ruthless, and hard life is. Although the storm hasn’t abated yet, I am seeing a bright, bright ray of sunshine now. I am insanely happy today. A few months ago, when it dawned on me that my relationship had really gone down the drain, I had […]
“Katrina and her cousin went on a short trek nearby, and by the end there were 60 or 70 leeches on her. Poor thing, she is a city girl, didn’t know what to do! When she came back we removed all the leeches, then I had to sweep the blood off the floor with a […]
Years ago, during a long trip to Europe, I was making my way to Cornwall from London. I had booked my train tickets online from India a month in advance. I was to catch my train from Paddington and was very excited about this little adventure though I had just reached London by train from […]
I read an article in the newspaper a while ago, about the ‘worst things to put on your online dating profile’- one of them was ‘loves to travel’-because who doesn’t? Saying you love to travel is kind of like stating the obvious- very few would give up the chance to see the world if money […]
Over the years, I have chronicled a bunch of places and experiences that I will remember for the rest of my life. This doesn’t mean that this is an all-encompassing list, but each place is unique. They are all in India as that was the intention, except for one in Bhutan. And it isn’t in […]
It is surprising how just three days of bone warming sun, soft sand, towering palm trees and chilled breezers with friends who have shared over a decade of my life, can expunge a couple of years of world-weariness. Which is why after a long hiatus, the first thing I felt compelled to write was a […]
The city of Bhopal is like a mysterious old bard. In a tattered gunny bag swung over one of his atrophied shoulders, he hides a treasure trove of rare gems plucked right out of history books. It takes effusive flattery, gentle persuasion and an unrelenting perseverance to get him to allow a peek into his […]
We’ve just come back from a 10 days trip where we drove around 1800 kms from Mumbai to North Karnataka and back. Over the last seven years we have enjoyed quite a few road trips and while we aren’t adventure junkies, there is always something to be learnt from each trip and some advice to […]
I had gone to Nasik last year with a few friends. It was more to enjoy the drive just after the monsoons, and we stayed at Sula’s resort Beyond. While Beyond is not bad, it is definitely not worth the premium. This year when the monsoons came to a close, a road-trip to Nasik hovered again […]
Blame it on the book I’m reading (Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul) or the interest in seeing the cultural impact of it being in both Asia and Europe, but I can’t deny that I’m completely smitten by Turkey. Now before you think that it’s just another country in the Middle East, let me show you this: No, it’s not […]
Experiencing a city during the festive season is like meeting someone on their wedding day. People tend to be on their best behaviour the day they are getting married. In fact, even the most obnoxious ones are amiable and benign on this day and just so, even the most vicious cities are friendly and becoming […]