Panic, Panic, Hope.

My laptop screen light scarcely out, I was lying on my bed on my belly, in a bedsheet visibly wrinkled and scattered with Chanachur crumbs, no matter how big your palms are they are never enough to contain the crumbs, never. I don’t like the feeling of those crumbs touching my body hair, I wanted to crawl down from the bed and get something to mop those away; I had not ceased in drowsiness on what I was reading on the pdf, but life has taken a peculiar turn for me: it seemed to me I ended up reading the black and white portions more than the green highlighted ones, and I soon functioned as a person just as I read- never doing the needful. I care less about how and when I fall asleep because it is almost unintelligible for me what benefit would it be to remain awake, but I kept telling myself “I do not wanna fall asleep”. Just as the motion of this phrase was about to put me in a fragmented lull, my Laptop rang in the unsetting bubbling sound of Google Duo- delays, daisies, daydreams an...

It must have been a minute or so, and I already started zoning out. It’s not like I had to really strive a lot to forge a connection, she was cordial with her smile but I have this thing for thinking while I….and her eyes- did I mention? Oh, I should before I zone out to the…..anyway, those are beautiful. I don’t need to use better adjectives to justify. You all have your own definition of beautiful eyes so just imagine that. Black, Brown, Pale, Blue, Deep, Dreamy does not matter now; or so I think you don’t need to know because- ah a Mandala sketchbook, these things are in trend now and there is mauve curtains, mauve bed, mauve fairylight or so it seems, and a mauve or maybe purple human size mirror- that she uses to click those sensuous pictures and a violet paperboat- wait? Wasn’t that on my bookshelf?- what-now a cat? Why? “that’s—there. A cat.” “well it looks like one- I didn’t know you had one?” “are you allergic?” “how does it matter this way? is it white?” “no, mauve. Come on A...

In his poem “Having a Coke with You,” Frank O’Hara addresses the superfluousness of one’s surroundings when in love, and more specifically the superficiality of art in comparison to love. He achieves this by referring to a simple gesture as "having a coke" to a more serious sign of love as comparing a loved one to a work of art: "I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world". Here Coke is rendered not as global brand but as object-event, whose value for the speaker is inadequately comprehended by the theory of commodity fetishism. There’s something about having a Coke with you, about this ordinary act of consumption, that makes it a “marvelous experience” for the speaker and his beloved, an experience that is intensely theirs but also somehow yours, the grammar of the poem interpellating you as participant. The title “Having a Coke With You” seems to suggest that the poem could fit many relationships, the actual content just doesn’t create a “one-s...

  "Music…is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve?" -Vikram Seth, An Equal Music. A train compartment. A kid is sleeping while leaning on to his father as the father discusses the hit and miss nature of a renowned Singer's performance— they are on their way to attend his early morning concert in Pune. He proclaims that the inconsistency of Guruji's singing is the true mark of a genius as the half-drowsy boy wakes up to ask, "what raga will he sing today?" Such was the robust nature of mythical asceticism around, that it engulfs the boy's consciousness in a trance-like way. Chaitanya Tamhane, as we know by now, has this peculiar fascination of telling an extremely personal story while using a niche subculture (Here, Indian Classical Music) as the medium. At one level, “The Disciple” is a story of the eternal quest for perfection, and at another level, it’s the frustration of seeing lesser artists being celebrated by the mass, an...

Indian Cinema in the last two decades has two distinct ways of portraying a Father- The disapproving father and the ‘with you in thick and thin’ father. While the later has been mostly seen in a Girl’s coming of age dramas courtesy to the gracious smile of Pankaj Tripathy, the former has been a stereotype dating back to the typical Bollywood dramas of 70s- a father who would never approve of children’s Romantic partners- a trope immortalized by Amrish Puri- and later found its way in the Anupam Khers and Paresh Rawals. In recent years, Farookh Sheikh in YJHD and Akash Khurana in Barfi has been two of my favourite Father characters from a Boy’s coming of a age drama where you could explore the other side of fatherhood of being a silent mentor- an aspect that is perhaps not very theatrical to cater to Masala sensibilities. Tuti Futi is one such silent guiding light for Jagga whom he is not obliged to love from an undying sense of duty, but whom you can’t do anything but love. Tuti Futi a...

  The Family Man 𝘚2E6 was the moment when finally the "hero" and "villain" of the season come face to face to have a chat and it easily makes for the most intriguing and power packed episode this season. In all great Good vs Evil movies we at least get one of these "money-scenes" where there will be a verbal show off between the two protagonists who have different, contrasting agendas. This is the moment in the show when Srikant and his allies have finally got hold of Raji who they tried to hunt down for the last few episodes. They bring Raji to the police station where the local villagers actually are militant empathisers. Srikant wastes no time to start interrogating her and as he realises that she is a highly trained guerrilla, he resorts to his "paintra" of emotionally blackmailing someone by creating a fake sentimental in order to get the information out regarding the attack. Now this has been the defining character trait of Srikant's c...

  Though Short films through their apparent structural constraints appear to be a tricky territory to navigate, filmmakers have time and again found it a very liberating format to tell stories about love. As Tagore said about story stories, “Sesh hoyeo hoilo na sesh” meaning it ends but doesn’t seem to have ended, scriptwriters have exploited the hopeless Romantic in us with the hope and inquisitiveness that lingers with the ending of a short film. Kayoze Irani’s “Ankahee”- part of the Netflix anthology “Ajeeb Dastaan” does just that with its anachronistic romance and both warms and breaks your heart in a span of a few minutes. The very first scene of Ankahi establishes the two characters and the conflict at hand as we see the camera panning to the protagonists in the bed against the morning sun. Soon we see the woman, Natasha(Shefali Shah) getting ready to go out and the man, Kabir(Manav Kaul) has his eyes glued on the woman like a love-sick cat. They talk and flirt in sign langua...