The Cheek of Sridevi, and Bringing Up Other Bodies
Image via the glorious sridevi the empress What happened to Manju of Chaalbaaz after the credits rolled and she married the stubbly suitable boy Suraj, aka Sunny Deol? Sure he loved her, certainly he was happy he married her rather than the terrified little Anju. But in a decade after they had two children did...
Sometimes, even the darkness insists on speaking
A Kenyan folktale tells the story of a Sultan’s wife who wasted away in the palace and a peasant’s wife who was plump and strong. The Sultan interrogated the peasant – what was he feeding his wife? The peasant replied, “Meat of the tongue”. But no fancy-shmancy meat of the tongue that the Sultan ordered...
The New Indian Fog
IN THE third of the four sections of The Beautiful and the Damned — The Factory — the author speculates on why a young migrant describes his chronic illness merely as ‘pain’: “Given the lives that migrant workers lived, someone like Pradip had no choice but to abandon the nuances of illness for a broad,...
I Will Never Heil Again
The Plot Mahatma Gandhi wrote two letters to Adolf Hitler addressing him as “My Dear Friend”, suggesting he mend his ways. All manner of narratives could have addressed this historical Ripley’s Believe it or Not item. The one chosen is college-circuit drawing room tragedy. Gandhi walks about. Hitler rants as the Reich collapses. Indian National...
The ladies have familiar feelings
THE DELHI launch of Granta’s feminism issue — The F Word — took an unprecedented, iconoclastic course. All four panelists including sole contributor from India, Urvashi Butalia, what is the right word now… dissed the book for leaning heavily towards the experiences of the straight, white female. After reading the book, one is inclined to...
A revolutionary artist. How the British burnt his shocking images from the 1943 Bengal Famine. And how we can finally see them today.
SOMETHING OF the thrill of reading the Pepys diaries is awakened at the new Chittaprosad retrospective at the Delhi Art Gallery. It is an enormous show with much to see and much historical frisson to invoke. First, several stunningly produced books, including a collection of his political portraits and a selection of the artist’s letters...
Well played Zoya, well played
You understand that we don’t think women can only make ladies-type films. Understand also that we don’t have problems with ladies-type films. Ah, so now all that hedging has been done let us ask this question. Why didn’t anyone tell us Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a chick-flick? This is a movie that has all...
Bosedk, which way is Punjab?
IT IS unfortunate that the Gurgaon- based artist duo Thukral and Tagra are at this moment best known for their copyright intervention with the Delhi Belly song Bhaag DK Bose. Returning from a long trip abroad, the pair were outraged to see the song popping up in search engines instead of their Bosedk, a phrase...
The explosion in the poverty lab
OUR GRANARIES are overflowing. Foodgrain stocks have scaled to an alltime high of 65.60 million metric tonnes. This is frustrating news for everyone worried about the nutritional status of the poor in India. With the Food Security Act hanging in the balance, this would be the perfect moment to suggest the poor be given more...
See you in the hot flash club
IN 1984, when Namita Gokhale wrote Paro: Dreams of Passion, she was 27. Her equally youthful heroine Priya lived vicariously through the excesses of Paro, a woman the Victorians would have called an adventuress. Paro revisited reveals itself as something of a genre bender. It’s too cynical to be chick-lit and too familiar to be...
We’re not like you. We don’t think so much
YOU’VE HEARD people say, “I thought my parents were liberal.” This is the moment when a lover is brought home. The moment when you hear parents using unfamiliar words in your mother tongue. You learn precise invective for people your family considers alien. Words that ascribe meaning to the length of legs, the size of...
Pirates have feelings, you know
IN ALAN Bennett’s novella The Uncommon Reader, Queen Elizabeth becomes an obsessive reader when her beloved corgis wander by a mobile library near the palace. She’s transformed from a bored, frankly amoral monarch into a sentient being. In one episode, she flummoxes the visiting French president by asking him about Jean Genet. Recently, Bollywood too...
