Imagine: A life that does not have you groaning over toilet seats or empty bottles or over-flowing ash trays. A life that does not require you to be on your best behaviour, worry about bad hair days, or lose sleep over the fact that you are completely and utterly incapable
Having grown up in Gujarat during the '90s, to me Gujarat always seemed as a backward state in the country. On trips to Mumbai, I would often marvel at the ‘skyscrapers’ (the tallest of which at the time was barely 40 storeys tall!) and wide roads, wondering when the
I happened to go to a college fest a few days ago where I was judging the photography contest. After the show I asked the group of 20 college students if anyone wanted to be a photographer. I saw blank faces with only one hand raised, although I had just
India has never been short of comedy. Whether it is the humour of Johnny Lever or Jaspal Bhatti, we’ve all had our share of laughs. On the other hand, India had also probably never seen comedy outside of the reel world for a long time. But now things are
I was four when I first got the taste of Bollywood. My version of 'Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhen' from the box-office hit Baazigar sounded more like “Li Ka Li Ka Li Aankhen” and I sang it with a hilariously Anu Malik-like panache and confidence. From then, until now,
“Sipping masala chai off the highway. Super drive to Bombay so far.” Wow. Imagine that. On a random Tuesday evening, you’re driving to Bombay. It’s a great ride, thankfully great weather. You’ve been listening to that carefully compiled ‘on the road’ CD. You pull away just for
One day, all of a sudden, the world came crashing down.It wasn’t a great disaster. Neither was it a heart-wrenching calamity. It was simply a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I sat and typed out a completely mundane story about luxury retail. Luxury retail.
Marjorie Kramer is of the view that there is no such thing as the ‘Anatomy is Destiny’ theory, that women have some inherent feminine quality which encompasses all their works and constitutes a ‘feminine aesthetic’, such as vaginal images. “Henry Moore does holes as much as Georgia O’Keeffe and
Mumbai teaches you ignorance. It is an inevitable lesson imparted regardless of whether you live in the tallest luxury tower or a tent on the sidewalk. It teaches you how to perceive but not act, it teaches you how to pity while remaining in the mode of inaction. When I
Stories, incredibly human, wrap themselves around these vignettes of lust. Sometimes, there is profound unhappiness in the places where lust has earlier been; people and times encoded into spaces and movements. Sometimes, there is staleness, a burnt taste even, and there is the realisation that there is as much wariness
[Cue in Eminem song] One Shot... One Opportunity... Back in February, I chanced upon an announcement on Asia Writes. A competition. One chance, one opportunity... to be published*. I teetered on indecision. Face it, my inner demon said. Don’t be such a ninny. If you are good, you are
From the writer of the acclaimed Difficult Daughters (1998), comes a new novel that traverses yet another aspect of upper middle class life in Delhi. In Kapur’s new novel, Custody (2011), her readers are led into the world of ugly custody battles in the background of India’s maze