All You Ladies

When you watch pink you wonder why hasn’t anyone made a movie on this before. It is so fundamental to a women’s existence- especially the middle class urban women, that you wonder what took it so long. There is no theme left that Bollywood has not touched- however obscure, but for a reality that is so in our face, so ubiquitous and so omnipresent, it took so long to portray. May be the answer lies in this very paradox. The issues raised and the all the subtleties and all the obvious-es are so much a part of our existence that we have become inured to it. It is like a pain that we have become so used to that we hardly think about it while going about with our lives. When I watched Pink it was like a storm of emotions-a blast from the past, all the angst that I had forgotten about was raked up. I wonder if there is any woman in India who watched this movie, and had nothing that resonated with her. From a woman’s friendliness that is interpreted as a sign of her love interest, to ...

‘Patta patta boota boota’ is a very beautiful ghazal by Mir, an 18th century Urdu poet from Delhi. It is sung by various ghazal singers but my favorite version is in the voice of Vinod Sehgal from Gulzar’s serial Mirza Ghalib. Here is a bit of an excerpt from the ghazal: Patta patta boota boota haal hamara jaane hai Jane na jane gul hi na jane baagh to sara jane hai Every leaf and twig in the garden knows my state, It is only the flower that is unaware of my feelings. Chaara gari beemari-e-dil ki rasm-e-shahr-e-husn nahi Warna dilabar-e-naadan bhi is dard ka chaara jane hai To cure an ailing heart is not the tradition of society of beauty, Even though they’re (the innocent beloved) aware of its remedy. We read differently at different stages of life. When young we tend to interpret it in the context of the beloved and find it all very moving, but I believe once you have kids in your life that you can really feel the misery, pain and irony hidden in these lines...

The world is divided into two kinds of people- one who think like me and the other who should learn to think like me. Nowhere does this thought haunt me more than when I open my facebook page. It takes me a good couple of minutes to control my demons of arrogance and let sensibility dawn on me, except when it is times of elections or big political events, when from a thinking human being I morph into a computer and begin processing information only in binary, in a ‘you- are- with- me- or- against me’ mode. In times of elections you may have noticed, that an occasional comment or a remark on facebook can act as a sting operation on ideological divides of your friends and expose to you your friends like you have never seen them before. Some you weren’t reasonably impressed with, back then in college, will become elevated in your opinions if their beliefs are same as yours, and others who differ will definitely take a beating. All I can say is whatever your leanings may be, if y...

There is no movie in recent times that has so casually presented love without really undermining or simplifying the complexity that comes with it. I may go so far as calling it Woody Allen-ish, because one parallel that comes to mind is ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona’. Although VCB is far more intellectually stimulating with undertones and subtleties that LPNY cannot match but there is an overall similarity in the approach i.e. a simple breezy presentation without being melodramatic or didactic about anything. The movie is made by a débutante women director 'Anuradha Menon’     (more popularly known as 'Lola Kutty’ of MTV) and and as they say for authors I guess its true for first time directors too-who also happen to be first time scriptwriters-that it has shades of their own self. At many points in the film the characters and conversations become so earthy that you wonder if its autobiographical. The theme is quite simple and the format pretty much NOT overused.The ...

If you watch a movie after a long laborious day you want it to be either dull enough to soothe your frayed nerves or intellectually stimulating enough to lift you out of your mundane life and thrust some questions on you that you escape the mundane for a while..I went to watch lunch box expecting the latter but was left a bit disappointed, perhaps it was too much to expect from an unknown director and too much naive on my part to believe that  all film festival movies are quality cinema. The movie couldn’t really justify the efforts that I had put in to watch it…putting two spoilt kids to bed after spending a whole day with them, plus the rarity of the occasion of going to a theatre to watch a movie unlike the rest which you watch on your TV, recorded and sliced as per your convenience. The movie is about how two lonely people connect over a chance exchange of letters when the lunch box gets delivered to the wrong guy.The idea is not trite, the movie could have been impactf...

Have you ever wondered how incredibly addictive is making up scenarios in head. It is such a sweet waste of time, a totally harmless indulgence and if you were wondering that it can be qualified as ‘planning’ then let me add that it has nothing to do with the probability of the event. I fear if ever mind reading becomes a reality I may be classified as a clinical schizophrenic  The beauty of staying at home and looking after kids is that you can completely shut your brain and go about tending kids and daily chores in an almost brain dead sort of a way. This is when you can totally revel in building scenarios. One such mind exercise that I presented myself, was, 'What if I were to pick three movies from 100 years of Bollywood’s history’ which are truly legendary. Of course there are hundreds of them but if I have to cut them down to three who will they be. I agree that it is presumptuous to call it a 'mind’ exercise; at best it may qualify as faffing, and that ...