June 2009 - Posts - First Cut

June 2009 - Posts

New York: When Yash Raj gets serious

Posted by Priya Ramani at 
This is what I wrote about Hindus, Muslims and Hindi cinema in Lounge before seeing the latest Yash Raj Film. After seeing it, I'm convinced that it takes more than a well meaning Muslim director and a big film production company to change the way Indian Muslims have been depicted in Bollywood. Both Neil Nitin Mukesh and John Abraham play Muslims...

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Kanpur's ridiculous solution for eve teasers

Posted by Priya Ramani at 
A handful of women's colleges in Kanpur have barred their students from wearing jeans, sleeveless blouses and high heels, saying it will keep eve teasers who throng the college gates in control. Eve teasers and molesters should be in jail, and not outside college gates. We Indian women are harassed on the streets and in the public spaces of our...

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Why you have to see Star Trek

Posted by Priya Ramani at 
Dad heads to certain death as his baby boy is born. "What will we name him?" is his last question to his wife before he is blown to smithereens. Cut to movie title: Star Trek . Director J.J. Abrams has clearly been watching Hindi movies. I know I've seen this sequence several times over in Bollywood but movie encyclopedia, friend and Lounge...

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People in (racist) glass houses...

Posted by Priya Ramani at 
Are Australians racist? Maybe, but we all know that nobody's more racist than us Indians. Ask the women from North East India who are called "Chinkies" and must put up with more than an average Indian woman's share of sexual harassment. Or ask the Nigerians students here who battle Indian racism every day. Forget caste, the just-concluded...

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