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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Let’s go on a walk down Chimbai Road in Bandra. Through the bylanes, passing some vintage-cute bungalows, till we hit a decrepit bungalow with suspected squatters, take that left and walk till we reach the water’s edge. This is the Chimbai Koli village. Just across the water to the left, across the water you won’t […]
Every inch of landscape in a three mile radius around Hollywood screams of glamour, showbiz and drama. Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck beam at us from large posters that hang alongside the winding road . Upscale apartment complexes and palatial estates seem to look down their noses at us as we make our way to […]
Rows and rows of palm trees stand erect like sentinels along the winding roads of Los Angeles. They perhaps shoulder the responsibility of guarding the very wealthy angles (and some devils) who deign to reside here. Rubbing shoulders with them are towering high rises that fall just a few feet short of the doors of […]
Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard I don’t believe in travelling to get away. Yes, there have been times when the city has thrown so much more than I thought I could handle, that I […]
Someone in the world is excited about having just swiped their credit card online. They are putting in their leave application and checking out the best deals on travel packages. Someone is preparing themselves for an adventure, reading hotel and restaurant reviews. They are excitedly telling their friends about their next journey. Holding a golden […]
Yet another week in Michigan and I find myself staring at an even more dismal sight than what I beheld the last time I was here. The weather app on my phone shows a tiny grey cloud showering drops of water over the city and sure enough, the view outside is a real life, zoomed-in […]
Twenty minutes have passed since baggage collection at Swarnabhoomi Airport. So far, no sign of the Bangkok Taxi man who had promised online to take us across Bangkok over the next three days. Mom’s worry lines are deepening. Mamaji (Col Rawat) has acquired the lips-tightly-stretched “they’re all cheats” look. Saransh,10, is sulking since his […]
The seeds of my love affair with San Francisco were sown the very day we were acquainted. What started out as a mere check mark on the to-do list of a travel aficionado, culminated into a full blown obsession which grew exponentially with each passing day. This is the story of my bitter sweet […]
They say that if you make the mistake of venturing into the Himalayas even once you are doomed. Because they keep calling you back. Neither pictures, nor words can capture the magnificence of those mesmerising bugyals and towering peaks whose beauty brought tears to my eyes. Hope some of you will read this travelogue and feel […]
There are dozens of places on this planet which stake claim to the coveted appellation ‘Heaven on Earth’. We even have one in the midst of all the so called squalor in India – Kashmir. But this is not a sonnet praising the beauty and serenity of Kashmir; it is a humble offering to […]
Something intriguing and fascinating is in the air. The mere memory of a place is regenerating and revitalizing lost and even non-existent connections. A certain band of people, well into their40s and 50s, who once knew each other as children in a never-never land called Pachmarhi, are reaching out across continents, countries through charged cables […]
“I don’t care how big and fast computers are, they’re not as big and fast as the world.” ~ Herbert Simon When was it that the travel bug bit me? Was it when I started to read travel books? Or was it during my trip to the Valley of Flowers? Or perhaps my annual trips back […]