No! The power and the right. The answer. And, the questions!

This column has also been published at Readomania.


“Pink is not just a movie. It is a revolution,” team Pink has recently said. I wish. I wish to believe. I wish to believe in the strength it has just handed out to me. The strength of rights over the petty pity of sympathy. I am floored by the brave attempt by team pink. I have no words, but silent gratitude.

Think of it! Pink did not seek your sympathy of any kind. Exactly how it should be. We don't need your sympathy by being poor, by having carefully dressed up, by cracking a difficult admission test, by being the only daughter, by being the puny, fearing kind who doesn't dare give friendship a chance lest the friends prey on her. We don’t seek your sympathy by playing the game low key, by the rules of safety and pepper sprays. No.

And then, Pink didn’t play the cliché “us” and “them” too. It didn’t mark a gap between genders. It picked up the issue, instead. It pointed out the patriarch staleness in men and women alike, and the call of equality, in rights and respects, again in the both of them.

Pink started in each of us a thought process.

Pink! To Suzette Jordan. To us. And to you, Auntie.

This column was also published in Youth Ki Awaaz, The Speaking Tree, My City for Kids.

A courtroom scene that stormed the internet down; a question of virginity and its safekeeping, and of matters and discussions best kept under wraps. Of police diaries denied, of warrants backed with power and politics. Of alibi and reasoning, and of the usual versus the unusual. Of morality versus law, and of morality of yours versus mine. Or, of whose?


But really, what happened on that fateful night?

Native Immigrants (Movie Review)

Okay, time for a commissioned movie-review! :)

But before that, first, the movie – NATIVE IMMIGRANTS

Review:

What if you get up one fine morning at your home, dress up and arrive at work, and you’re told to “GO HOME NOW”? Right! As much as is said about roots and identities, this becomes the stark reality for some unfortunate souls that we’d prefer not to much think about from our personal safe cocooned space of shelters we call our home. Unless.

We make it to The Cannes!!

এই তবে... আরশিনগর!!?

সোজা রিভিউয়ে ডাইভ মারার আগে দু-একটা কথা বলে নেওয়া আবশ্যক। অর্থাৎ কিনা – আরশিনগর – চারিদিকে এতো সব শোনার পরেও – আদৌ দেখলাম কেন। দেখলাম, তার কারণটা ওই... বাঙালি রক্তদোষ। সবাই খারাপ বলছে, আমি আমি ততই ভাবছি – আর আপামর প্রত্যেকটা ভেতো বাঙালির মতন করেই, যে – ছ্যাঃ, ওই ব্যাটারা নিশ্চয়ই বোঝেনি... আমি তো ইয়ে, যাকে বলে গিয়ে... আমি, মানে, নিশ্চয়ই বুঝবো! অপর্ণা সেন আফটার অল, যিনি কিনা পরমা, পারমিতা, শনকা ভেবেছেন একদা, তিনি কি করেই বা কতই বা... ভুল, ভুল! আমি বুঝিনি!! সত্যি বলতে কি, এখন দেখার পর থেকে একটা অন্যরকম সন্দেহ হচ্ছে – টাইটেলকার্ডটা ভুল পড়িনি তো? মানে, অপর্ণা সেন... উনিই তো...?

এবারে রিভিউয়ে আসা যাক, শেষমেশ।

(Har Har) Byomkesh – This and that…

My Kolkata trip this winter has been studded with visits to movie theatres lusting after Truth, so far. First, Jisshu (not Jishu, anymore) with contextual disappointments though with no fault of his other than agreeing upon it (A passing mention -  I actually ended up watching that because I had misjudged the timing of release of This Byomkesh which was my actual aim). While he did what perhaps he was asked to do and well - yet, I couldn’t but wonder if it’s is about copyright issues (lack of that, that is) or something else but somethng was positively wrong for sure. I also didn't quite see how Bengalis are (or presumed to be) suddenly on a spree with this dhoti-clad shawl-wrapped thick-frame adorned bhodrolok… and then I reasoned it with – well, one Bengali is no more a poet, he is now a film director – you see!

And with such magnanimous liberal and open, welcoming, non-cynic mind I went – today again – to give This a try! And whoa… This!!

“The Guitar” - A fling that turns into a Lifetime affair, and how!

That she is dying and has something from a month to a two to go, was spelt out to her in a professional, perhaps slightly compassionate and yet disengaged tone. The verdict had been handed out, clearly and unambiguously. She was further explained how she'd first lose her voice, then her sight, and then, decay, not quite slowly.  And yet, as funny as it may sound, this is not but the only verdict she was handed out on the same day. As if she wasn’t yet quite done with! And so, the next two follow: that, she has been "downsized" at her job, and unloved by her lover.

Three verdicts - each unknowing and indifferent to the other two; each, brutal times more due to the other, and yet oblivious; each, each alone, having the power, proved over history, to easily crumble and perish a soul to dust but not before mercilessly tossing it aside into a nothingness safely and surely unknown to one who hasn't walked that road or died those deaths that she was about to, starting that day.

So well, you tell me! What do you do when you’re handed out such a destiny, and you know that they happen, for sure, and all you might do is to accept them and know, tell yourself, in capitals, bold and underlined, that – Very well, girl. This is it!

Know what? Idea!

You… accept.

Still Alice - a Film Review!

This article has also been published in Women's Web!


This is going to be a rather morbid post, I promise you!

When I had sat myself down to watch this movie, I was uninitiated, totally uninitiated. Of course, I had chosen it only because Julianne Moore, who played the protagonist in it, won herself the Oscar for it. Little did I have a notion of what to look for, what to think of it. But, having watched the gripping tale of “Still Alice”, all I can say is – it truly has been a lesson, at least. A lesson that, one, can really never learn!

How?

Rajkahini...

I’ll submit at the very outset that this was one movie I was extremely apprehensive about. The raging reviews did it, of course. This film, clearly, seemed to have found itself a place in the niche club of things which they call “extremes” – with reviews (sorry, reactions!) of absolutely polar opposite views on the very same issues. Most of those who watched seemed to have either liked it so much that it disturbed their sleep, or disliked it so much that they could not sleep too!


I was pleasantly surprised that it was not. I found Rajkahini to be a rather brave, ambitious attempt at something that we needed to hear, watch and think about... 

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) - Film Review

This has also been published at Women's Web.


When I sat to watch the movie "Birdman", there was no denyng that it was indeed because it was the Oscar win this year. I knew that if I like it, it'd mean I've understood it; else, I plain haven't had got it. I had assumed it'd be one which would be rich in a way that I'd have to try and reach. That I'd need to understand references, watch out, and would possibly miss out on few layers.

At the end of it, I realise a different thing - that, what I actually missed out on was the name of the movie. The entire name, which is:

"Birdman - The unexpected Virtue of Ignorance!"

That said, the rest was really for you and for me, and for any and all of us.

Another Woman - Woody Allen - random thoughts

(Non-disclaimer: There are hardly any spoilers in this piece of discussion.)

This is common if I have to guess; you see that woman, typically older than you are - on the street, in the television, or at a party – and from the way she dresses, walks, talks and carries herself, you wish fleetingly that when you’re of that age, you’d like to age like her.

Blue Jasmine - Woody Allen - a film review

Well, let’s make a confession right as I start – I am kind of new to Woody Allen. Yes, how-much-so-ever uninitiated - illiterate if you would - this may sound. In fact, to confess, I had only watched “Annie Hall”, “Love and Death” and “Everything you wanted to...” before this. I did like all of them, but of course for what they were due for – that queer sense of humour, that slapstick humour, that oblivious not-that-I-care-much-for-you-but-can-we-still-sleep kind of weird humour. Humour, if at all!

Among those, I was stupid enough to form a vague guess about Allen and his film-making orientation, style and restrictions, particularly around the subjects he covered and stories that he chose to tell.

This, Blue Jasmine, my fourth of his, changed that. And how!

Unfaithful - a film review

Okay! Here, to break the jinx of non-blogging for quite a while, I start again.

A film review, or rather a film evoked rants, to go.

Unfaithful!

So, as far the storyline goes, it’s known to most, and yet, worth a quick recap for the interest of some.

A wife, apparently well settled into an eleven years old marriage with a eight year old living proof for a boy-kid, busy and lonely perhaps just as most at her age and standing would be, steps into that infamous pit that society calls adultery. She bumps into this stranger one fine stormy afternoon, joins him for coffee, and thereafter for sex the next day and every other days thereon. Husband starts with getting an inkling, investigates, finds out, and then, confronts. No, not with the woman but with the lover. The confrontation that starts so well that it could even dig into the profound “why” and take the issue (no, not problem! Issue.) by it’s horn, however, unfortunately, rather, turns into a murder scene as the husband loses control over what he was meant to do and hits the guy on the head with a gift  that he gave her and then she gave him in turn. The rest of the movie becomes a matter of eventual mutual knowledge, that they know that they know, and of course, police. It ends with a note where a peaceful kid sleeps in the car backseat while the couple, musing over how their rest of life could be a beautiful escapade, both term as important, pulls up their car outside the police station and kisses passionately as the traffic signal goes from red to green to yellow, back to red.