Singing Of Shringaar: Negotiating Female Desire In 20th Century Hindi Cinema

In Casablanca (1942), Ilsa makes an impassioned plea to Rick, “Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.” Leading ladies in Hindi films, unfortunately, are rarely afforded the same frankness and have historically been confined to more subtle means of expressing their longings. The celebration of feminine desire on-screen is rare; rarer […]

Three of Us: A Slice Of Grief

Devotion, Freedom and Desiring Bodies

Dear Mira, My earliest memories of you are fictionalized glimpses of you swaying along the temple on the sea shore of Dwarka. I taste the salt in my mouth and your melodies, mere to giridhar gopal, dusro na koi (Mine is only Giridhar Gopal, no one else is mine) (Jairam) start ringing in my ears. […]

Just Another Story

Sinning in a shiny new satellite city called Adinobagh was inevitable. No other city begged for it in the same way. A city that is not really going to make it, that is trying too hard, that is anonymous, artificial. A city that might rise to the occasion if you were desperate enough. For an […]

A Tiger Learns to Leap

Shamsher Singh was on his way to consummate his marriage. To set the record straight, he wasn’t married to Bhanu yet. But their parents had met and decided that they were a perfect match for one another. And then Shamsher’s family pandit had adjudicated that it should happen within the next two months. Or else […]

Tu Kisi Rail Si

Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai. Mai kisi pul sa thar-tharata hu.’ Tu Kisi Rail Si‘guzarti hai,Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai.Mai kisi pul sa thar-tharata hu.’1 Sonku has vivid dreams in August and blames the humidity. The visions from last night have deeply moved him. Swanand Kirkire draped in Sonku’s mother’s saree, crooning him […]

In Transit

Back when they were in school, Rhea invented a game called “Let’s Pretend We’re Strangers”. The premise was simple, one can gauge it from the name. Neither party knows the other. “It’s like playing house, but the opposite,” is how Ara would often summarize it. It wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Rhea, ditzy as […]