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Music Here is why the Popularity of Ali Sethi’s Pasoori Matters
Ali Sethi’s Pasoori has become a social media sensation, so much so it inspired The New Yorker to frame him as some sort of a messiah uniting Indians and Pakistanis through art. While Sethi is by no stretch of the imagination the greatest or the first artist to be revered on both sides of the border, his rise through the latest chapter of cold politics on either side of the border, is important.
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POV Jayeshbhai Jordaar Review: A Loud Firecracker of a Film
Jayeshbhai Jordaar is everything you’d expect from a Ranveer Singh performance. But while the charms work, the film can often become too loud for its own good. That doesn’t, of course, make it not worth your time.
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Love and Sex Beyond People and Relationships: This is my Modern Love Story about Mumbai
Convention dictates that love manifests in terms of the people we choose to be with but for somebody like me, it is the freedom of not having or wanting to make that choice that has felt the more liberating. Like Prime Video’s ‘Raat Raani’ (part of Modern Love Mumbai) I have found love in moments, inanimate objects and the many ways Mumbai both challenges and supports you. For it is perhaps the only city where you can feel loved without being defined by it.
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POV Indigo, Discrimination and Raising A Special Needs Child: A Mother’s View
As the mother of a special needs child, the Indigo incident was triggering. For it brought back memories of the times where I have fought discrimination and societal ignorance to get my child to be treated fairly.
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POV Thar Review: Lots of Style, but Little Substance
Spectacular to look at, Thar sports a more than decent performance by Anil Kapoor. Everything else about the film though underwhelms.
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POV Dreamy Careers: How I Got Caught in the Vortex of ‘Following Your Passion’
Being passionate about my work has helped me navigate the worst of times, but lately, my career feels like a never-ending maze. It makes me wonder if chasing my passion was even worth it in the first place.
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Social Commentary Surviving the Indian Summer as a Sanskari Woman
Every summer, women in India have to contend with ball-scratching, banyan-wearing men either telling them what to wear or leering at them long enough to force them into covering every inch of their burning skin. The body politics of this latest heatwave is a burden only women will be made to carry.
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Pop Culture Runway 34 Review: Doesn’t Land as Well as it Could Have
Ajay Devgn stars and directs this latest film about a miraculous plane landing. But what is a good premise to begin with is eventually wasted in this caricaturist portrayal of a near accident and the intrigue surrounding it.
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POV Living Between Cities: A Search for This Feeling Called Home
Modern life is all about migration and being on the move for work. But living between cities, while fetishized has exacted a toll on me that I did not see coming. I can call two cities my home, but rarely feel homely in either.
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Social Commentary Erasing Faiz Only Adds to his Significance
The removal of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry from CBSE’s school curriculum is a naïve step that only furthers the legend and significance of the poet’s seminal work.
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Pop Culture Jersey Review: A Compelling Sporting Drama
Shahid Kapoor’s Jersey doesn’t quite better the original, but for first-time viewers it is a compelling father-son story that successfully masquerades as a tale of sporting redemption.
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Pop Culture Pushpa, KGF and How Massive Beards Came to Replace Hairy Chests as a Sign of Masculinity
There was time a when our heroes carried hair on their chest as a sign of restrained heroism. It’s absurd really, but films like Pushpa and KGF imply the arrival of the most explicit and visible evidence yet of a man’s virility, troublingly told through violence – his overgrown beard.
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Pop Culture 10 Years of Vicky Donor: A Landmark Film that has Grown in Relevance
Released a decade ago Vicky Donor is probably a landmark film in the most understated sense possible. More than headline acts or box-office breaking numbers it ushered in a language to help us as a society to deal with taboo.
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Pop Culture Mai Review: A Chilling Blend of Violence and Innocence
Netflix’s Mai starring Sakshi Tanwar in a brilliant central role is a well-performed series based on a familiar premise. It does most things well, except resonate on an emotional level but is certainly worth watching and waiting for.
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Social Commentary The Great Indian Tourist: Defiling in the Name of Travel
Behold the rowdy Indian tourist – usually a man – who simply won’t stop defiling the many places that he pretends to cherish. It’s a sight we see every day but have chosen to do nothing about. Because what could we?
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Pop Culture Dasvi Review: Some Heart but almost no Soul
Dasvi has a terrific premise, some moments of joy, but is so poorly executed and written that it wastes a lot of its own potential; chief among them a more than decent turn by Abhishek Bachchan
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Pop Culture Sharmaji Namkeen Review: A Fitting and Fun Ode to the Legend of Rishi Kapoor
Sharmaji Namkeen is a sweet, warm film that uses the charms of the late Rishi Kapoor to great effect. So much so, it’s probably the kind of film that acts as both a tribute, and a reminder of his affability.
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Social Commentary 10-min Delivery and the Age of Entitlement
It’s easy to understand where the customer-is-god mentality is headed when entitlement and a need for things is created when it doesn’t even exist. It’s the clearest sign yet that we live in the age, not of enlightenment but entitlement.
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POV Why there is no Getting Past the Will Smith-Chris Rock Fiasco
Other than being chaotic and unpredictable this year’s Oscar ceremony will of course be dissected for the Will Smith-Chris Rock altercation that could both, have been avoided and dealt with better. All it did was undermine a night for cinema, especially for representation in cinema by two men who should’ve known better.
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Pop Culture Give Benedict Cumberbatch an Oscar Already
Over the last decade, Benedict Cumberbatch has casually put together a body of work that puts him into a rare category of actors who straddle heroism, genius and vulnerability with equal command. If he wins an Oscar for The Power of the Dog, it’ll only be confirmation of his now established stature.
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Pop Culture RRR Review: A Visual Masterpiece
Rajamouli’s latest feature film is just as visually invigorating as his previous films that though it could have used a tighter script, is everything you’d want to go back to the cinemas for.
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Social Commentary Pradeep Mehra and the Art of Fetishizing the Underdog
Mehra's story has rightfully inspired the country but what it represents and how it will be translated by the privileged reveals a lot about the questions that we are, as a people, unwilling to ask.
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People MC Tod Fod: Musician, Wordsmith and Eco warrior
Dharmesh Parmar was not just a singer, but also a philosopher, an environmentalist and the rarest of all, a principled artist.
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Pop Culture Jalsa review: Vidya Balan and Shefali Shah in top form
Suresh Triveni’s Jalsa is an unsettling story about two mothers who though miles apart in class, caste and social standing, speak the same language of motherhood.
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POV The Things I’d do to Avoid Holi
Whether it is the workplace or the neighbourhood, conning Holi and its rituals has become regular practice for me. So much so I have plans, both mental and tangible, to make sure I survive the week.
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Pop Culture Notes from a Screening of The Kashmir Files
I knew I was in for a unique experience when I chose to watch The Kashmir Files, but it was the absurdly regular and occasionally awkward events outside the film that made it, in certain ways, a special experience.
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Modern Family Seeking the Individual Behind My Late Father
Our Parents, to us at least, rarely exist as individuals with their own concerns, anxieties and aspirations. But after my father passed away, peacefully, I reconnected and discovered different sides of him that most men, maybe, hide behind the image of the father figure. I’m glad he got to live those lives.
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Pop Culture The Batman Re-imagines the Caped Crusader to Stirring Effect
Robert Pattinson’s Batman, if it were even possible, is darker and grimmer but the franchise and film is all better for it. This is a new vision and maybe a new legacy for the superhero we thought couldn’t be imagined any other way.
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People Shane Warne was a Magician On and Off the Field
I had the privilege of working with the Aussie who was as much a maverick off the field as he was on it.
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Pop Culture Jhund Review: Amitabh Bachchan Anchors a Stirring Underdog Story
Though Jhund is powered by the towering presence of Amitabh Bachchan it also belongs to the motley group of non-actors that become the film’s conflict and soul.
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Music
Here is why the Popularity of Ali Sethi’s Pasoori Matters
Ali Sethi’s Pasoori has become a social media sensation, so much so it inspired The New Yorker to frame him as some sort of a messiah uniting Indians and Pakistanis through art. While Sethi is by no stretch of the imagination the greatest or the first artist to be revered on both sides of the border, his rise through the latest chapter of cold politics on either side of the border, is important.
Add to list