An Ode to Mumbai’s Spirit Animal: The Resilient Rat
Posted inAnimals

An Ode to Mumbai’s Spirit Animal: The Resilient Rat

The humble rat has proved that he is a Mumbaikar to the core. He’s got it all – the die-hard spirit, the indifference to unhygienic surroundings, the apathy to the din of construction and an immune system that quaffs anything edible, and lives to tell the tale.
How Vishal Bhardwaj’s Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola Foreshadowed the Plight of Farmers
Posted inBollywood

How Vishal Bhardwaj’s Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola Foreshadowed the Plight of Farmers

In Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola, villagers are convinced they will be left with no bargaining chips once their lands are taken over by wealthy capitalists. This brief plotline of the film feels uncomfortably familiar to what the Indian farmers have been trying to communicate over the last two months. While the three new laws don’t propose changing ownership of lands, the protesting farmers have repeatedly raised these fears.
Posted inPop Culture

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.
30 Years Ago, The Silence of the Lambs Gave Us a Feminist Hero in Detective Clarice Starling
Posted inPop Culture

30 Years Ago, The Silence of the Lambs Gave Us a Feminist Hero in Detective Clarice Starling

The Silence of the Lambs isn’t just about Dr Hannibal Lecter. Its protagonist is actually Clarice Starling, a young FBI agent-in-training played by Jodie Foster. The film tells the story of how Starling tracks down a serial killer and saves a woman from becoming his next victim, even as she fights sexism at the workplace. Hannibal is just her sidekick in the whole shindig.