kaapimusings

Over the long weekend we finally watched Bareily ki Barfi over caramel popcorn and could have been avoided coffee. While the movie itself was not profound cinema it left the same pleasurable feeling that a good motichur laddoo would, a simple and small treat,  no michellin star plating needed. While the movie is aesthetically in the small town rom com genre, what sets it apart it Rajkummar Rao’s superb turn as Pritam Vidrohi, an unusual name for a most unusual role. 2017 will see him in Newton , whose trailer looks very promising, the web series, Bose dead/alive and Hansal Mehta’s Omerta which is finally premiering at TIFF. As versatile as the humble ubiquitous barfi, Rajkummar  can take any shape, or form, adding flavour to the film without drawing attention to himself.  Born and raised in Gurgaon, Rajkummar Rao, nee Yadav, graduated from FTII and got his first break playing the unscrupulous shop manager who uses a sex tape to make a quick buck. Ragini ...

Just when you felt that Bollywood was evolving and women were finally get the voice and respect they deserve, IIFA in New York saw Karan Johar, Saif Ali Khan and Varun Dhawan mock Kangana Ranaut, and rekindle the whole who’s the most nepotistic of them all controversy. In a shocking display of the chauvinism, arrogance and male privilege that continues to plague Bollywood, the three men ganged up against a successful female actor, demanding her silence and mocking her on an international platform as the world watched. Bravo!! Just when we thought we had laid the nepotism tantrum to rest, Karan Johar chose to prove the accusations against him right. What an otherwise articulate and progressive Saif Ali Khan, and barely out his Bollywood diapers Varun Dhawan were doing, is anybody’s guess. Dhawan, whose father made some of the crassest and commercially successful films in the 90’s, won an award for being in a such a film, where his abs put in a searing performance. Handing th...

Recently while flipping channels as I waited to tuck into my lunch, I had the joy of watching a few minutes of Ghulam on life OK only to hear the villain have a mental aside to the audience about how he was glad his wife was cowering in fright atop a cupboard. He hoped she would fall down and break her leg so that she would have to lie in their bed for a month atleast allowing him time to forcibly have sex with her. As I prevented myself from dropping the plate of yumminess I was holding I couldn’t help but gag a little. While the natural order of things is to progress and move forward, Indian television seems to have clearly missed that brief. There has been a lot of furor recently about the upcoming show Pehredaar piya ki and its depiction of a marriage between an older woman and a young child of 10. The promos were disturbing to say the least. Dressed suffocatingly in tradition, (and Aishwarya Rai’s dry-cleaned wardrobe from Jodha Akbar) a young woman steps out to celebr...

A consequence of parenting is your desire to buy every toy there is available to enhance your child's intellectual, social, motor and any other catch phrase skill the manufacturer has used. Not only do you need to buy toys for your kids, you also need to buy presents for other kids and so trips to the toy stores become a frequent event. As anyone who has reproduced, or has been reeling from the effects off undertaking this life long bungee jump will tell you, that we have been caught in storm of Frozen and its after effects.  While the movie was a fun watch and a refreshingly modern, and fun tale about two spirited sisters, the merchandise mania that followed has become tiring now. Frozen gowns, tiaras, bags, shoes, capes, clips, bowls and spoons, night dresses and underwear, the characters have taken over the lives and homes of millions of parents. The fear of God and law enforcement have kept them from letting go of their minds and kids, but three years later, I still see lit...

Phallus decided he wanted to take a joy ride that evening. His friend Penis had a bus. They would get some liquor, drive around. Maybe pick up a vagina along the way. Or a pair of tits...  Or perhaps they would watch the new movie where a cop beats up 20 people with his bare hands and then dances to that new song.. Something about sticking to each other with glue or fevicol or something... Oh yeah.. he could stick himself in that heroine right now. Actually just about any woman would be ok right now. he just needed a cunt to fuck.. Most of them these days were asking for it anyway, with their western clothes and late working hours. He had even caught a few walking around with boys. If the slut could be with that man then why not him.  He had never really had sex with anyone or even spoken about it though. That kind of talk was not allowed in his house. There were no rules on fantasies though.  There were many items on his fantasy wish list..Sheila, Munni, Chameli..all ...

I ended up watching Barfi this weekend…after panning and attempting to get tickets several times we finally managed to get seats for an evening show on Saturday and armed with caramel popcorn, coffee and coke we marched in and settled down to get entertained. Like the popcorn we were munching the movie began on a rather sweet and salty note… Barfi and his frothy love story were sliding down our throats with considerable crunch and ease, but in the end we were left with the not so nice bits that just never seemed to end…hard and difficult to chew and digest…While the movie is really long and never really aspires to be a serious take on relationships and living with people who have special needs, it makes some very pertinent points on life and perhaps the most discussed and least understood topic in the world… love... a majority of adults or even teenagers and children, may feel they have felt in love at some point of time or the other…whether its with a pet, a girlfriend, or a boyfri...

I happened to watch the domestic violence episode of Amir khan's satyameva jayate and though the facts about domestic violence never fail to shock me what shook me to my core was the fact that more than half the population of women in this country are victims of domestic violence and according to another statistic over 64% of women in this country have faced abuse within the confines of their homes. While its easy to say that we know men beat women and have been doing so for years, what was hard for me to digest this time around was the fact that they felt they were justified in doing so. Like we whip a horse or raise a cane at a dog to scare them or force them to obey, men who abuse women believe that if they are angry it is their right to hit their wives to keep her in check or treat her literally like a punching bag to vent their frustration on. Where does this diseased mentality come from? Where do these values come from? Where have we gone so wrong in our education, in our ...