The suburban housing society where I grew up was cosmopolitan, populated by young couples with children around the same age, so when we were not at school or playing outside,…

Oscar history has been made this year, when two women, Chloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell, have been nominated in the Best Director Category; Zhao also being the first non white…

All In The Family: In our movies, the death of a woman’s husband is treated with full bangle-breaking, sindoor-wiping, melodrama, accompanied by ear-splitting doleful background music.  So how is a…

The Evil That Men Do: Most serial killer books have men attacking and brutally murdering women, and more often than not they are sex workers. These women easy targets, the…

Soul Saga: The life of Sufi poet Amir Khusrau lends itself beautifully to a musical dastaangoi performance, especially if writers-directors and lead actors Ajitesh Gupta and Mohit Agarwal are also excellent singers.…

Walk into a toy shop and most will have his and hers toys for kids, starting gender conditioning young. Among the pink-wrapped packages for girls, there will be a kitchen…

For The Love Of Music: As Bandish 20-20,000Hz returns in online format, revisiting a review of the Aadyam-backed production when it first opened in 2017. After Afsaane: Bai Se Bioscope Tak,…

Purva Naresh’s plays are running in theatres in Mumbai, so here’s revisiting an interview with her: An Indian playwright is given a brief by an Australian director to write a…

A Man For All Seasons:   As a suburban theatre in Mumbai reopens post-lockdown with Chanakya, revisiting the successful play: Manoj Joshi has been performing Mihir Bhuta’s play Chanakya over…

Jungle Law:   It took a while to get Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize-winning novel, The White Tiger, to the screen; the book was not great, but caught India at a…