The Unforgettable Desire

My top three reasons for watching Shonali Bose’s The Sky Is Pink were: the title, Gulzar, and mainstream actors in a non-masala film. This Priyanka Chopra-Farhan Akhtar starrer film along with Rohit Saraf is based on the life of Aisha Chaudhary (played by Zaira Wasim). Despite being the story of Aisha, the film was promoted as a love story which added more curiosity to an expected inspiring story. The narrator of the film is Aisha Chaudhary who is dead and this, she clearly states in the beginning, is not a spoiler. Her voice is that of quirky teenager who has had enough time to understand the circumstances of her birth and death. She is quick-witted, constantly uses Delhi-based puns and jokes, and is really concerned about her parents’ sex life which by the way isn’t okay to talk about even when one is dead. Aisha is born with SCID – Severe Combined Immunodeficiency. She dies of pulmonary firbrosis. In case you have heard Aisha Chaudhary before, this information is not a s...

Silent All These Years , episode 19, season 15 of the longest running medical prime time drama on television, Shonda Rhimes'  Grey’s Anatomy,  is everything we need. The episode has two parallel stories revolving around the character of doctor Jo Karev (Camilla Luddington) whose meeting with her birth mother is revealed in flashback as she treats a patient named Abby (Khalilah Joi), who has been sexually assaulted. Having survived domestic violence, Jo Karev suspects Abby to have undergone something similar and assures her a safe space to speak about it if she wants to. Abby refuses treatment when another doctor, Teddy Altman (Kim Rave), is called for help. Teddy gains Abby's consent by treating her with utmost care and sensitivity without getting near her till she is allowed to. She suspects that Abby has been sexually assaulted which is later confirmed.  When doctors propose a rape kit for the patient in case she later wants to report the assault and get just...

Satyajit Ray adapted his grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’s short story ‘Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne’ (1915) as a film, bearing the same name that released in the year 1969, at the request of his son to make a film for children. Twenty years later, a similar request was made to an author by his son that had put the author in a dilemma, “You should never break a promise made to a child, but is the death of the author a reasonable excuse?” Salman Rushdie, the author in question, produced Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990, dedicating the book to his son. Ranade's Goopi and Bagha (Image source: The Hindu) Fifty years after Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne , Shilpa Ranade’s directorial debut  Goopi Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya (2019) has recreated the magical world of storytelling. After a few minutes into the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder about its uncanny resemblance of wordplay with Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories . Like Rushdie’s story, the film not only reminds ...

When a close friend made a coming out video about a year ago, I thought, “he shouldn’t do it.” A year before that video, I had asked one of my seniors from school to make a similar video because I was then a part of a storytelling club that was organizing an LGBTQ storytelling event. The thing that had changed in the span of a year is that, I had stopped looking at the LGBTQ as other. If someone doesn’t have to come out about being straight, then why should others? For something to be accepted as normal, we have to believe it to be normal. We do not live in that ideal world in my head and these stories of coming out are important, making the person along with many others accept themselves because oppression doesn’t merely come from outside, it comes from within too. Why am I talking about this? I am talking about this because I still have a smile on my face as I think about Shelly Chopra Dhar's  Ek Ladki ko Dekha toh Aisa Laga . It’s been twenty four hours since I watched the ...

The outline of the distant hill keeps it separated from the dark blue sky. Forgive me for my incompetence with shades of colours. The hill looks darker than the sky, towards a shade of black. The river that buzzes throughout the day with the people from nearby slums bathing and washing clothes is camouflaged in the darkness, so does the narrow sandy road to it. But in complete silence, one can hear the sound of the river flowing. The railway line and the road by its side cannot be seen either. But every now and then, a car or a motorbike passes by. It’s headlights are the only lights. Sometimes the vehicle goes in a jiffy, sometimes it’s slower. But every time it does, my mind goes back to the underrated romance that I love so much. Source: Google Image Search ( :P ) As the night takes over dusk, I look outside my window and tell mom, “this view gives me such a Lootera  feeling.” My mom asks me, “What is a Lootera wali feeling?” I say, “You know, when Ranveer and Sonak...

SRK movie| "Love You Zindagi"|  Alia Bhatt| Gauri Shinde. Don’t do overacting| Some romanticised concept/ optimistic way of looking at life| Don’t disappoint me after Udta Punjab | Oh, she will make it look so good. That’s how I reacted to the first trailer of Dear Zindagi . I was pretty sure that the story won’t be new. I was surer that Gauri Shinde will not disappoint me. I have watched English Vinglish a number of times. It’s in fact my go-to movie, if one may say so, when I am low. It is a movie, but it also reminds me that my understanding of the politics of a house is a general understanding, only unacknowledged by most. With that in mind, I wanted to watch Dear Zindagi , to have the feel of a Gauri Shinde film; a film which is unconventional at the most conventional points and somehow doesn’t go haywire.