Dil Se

The Avengers *ing Rated: 8.5/10 The Avengers is as perfect as it can get when an expert shakes up a cocktail of action and adventure in a soft bottle of humour, gives it a dash of vintage heroism and then splashes it across the universe in big, mean machines and outer space reptilian warships whose lashing tails can blow away all the Manhattan in New York.  The Adventures is also the best dose of alien spree that has come in a long while. As a precurser to a year which will be activitating Superman and Batman too, The Avengers stands tall on the broad shoulders of not one but five superheroes we have cherished over the decades — Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, the Hulk and, of course, the Black Widow played to perfection by a toned up Scarlett Johansson who has a “a bad bit of Red on her CV”. The good thing about this without-a-pause sci-fi thriller is that it is not limited to its syrupy action heroes. Even villain Loki, a God with too many negative human ambit...

At 39, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is too young to be an Elder. Somehow, one can’t get used to him being a Parliamentarian, nominated or otherwise. For one, he is too reticent to ever speak up, leave alone speak out. Second, he plays with a straight bat, something that is virtually alien to the atmosphere he would be stepping into. Third, it is almost as unbearable to call Sachin an MP as it is outrageous to see a textbook sound Rahul Dravid sweeping-scooping a ball in IPL in the most un-cricket-like manner! Thinking from Sachin’s end though, being a part of the 700-odd top group of the nation is not a bad retirement plan and his acceptance of the offer by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi last Wednesday is all that the master blaster will give as an indication of him gradually stepping out of the cricketing crease for quite another innings in quite another stratosphere. And, after all, it is not the little man’s fault that he is too celestial for anything worldly, and that includes the ...

The relationship page has suddenly made our group do some soul searching, an indulgence which has become an unfortunate casualty of the relentless urban rat race we have all become a part and parcel of. During one such brain-storming session, we came across a topic that is often brushed under the carpet, or worse still, ignored even if it is in the face of all to see. This issue is of marital rape and how many women experience this violence on their much touted “first night” itself. Since India largely believes in the concept of arranged marriage, marital rape becomes an eventuality of that. Just a leap away from the urban quarters of the nation, a bulk of the girls are brought up under parental guidance which suggests they have to be at the receiving end of this mindboggling eventuality of marriage. She is told in no uncertain terms that she needs to condition herself to her husband’s physical advances come what may, that too as a woman, an uninitiated one at that. Though many u...

The concern around maids in the wake of the recent arrest of a doctor couple for alleged starvation and torture of an underage domestic help compels one to think about this issue seriously and from both sides. As it now comes out, as it did in many other maid stories that rocked the Capital earlier, harassment is not always one-sided. As much as we condemn the so-called heinous act which the doctor couple meted out on their hapless maid, there are several instances of maids wronging their employers. With both husband-wife working they have little scope to do anything but surrender to the whims and fancies of their maids, fear as they do that they may lose her and not get another one. There are scores of examples of couples being harassed by their maids, dragged into false cases and often being accused of crimes they would never think of committing. A certain couple in Bangalore relate their horrific experience when an agency-bought ‘fully trained’ maid (who incidentally came for...

The Indian Army has been in the news constantly for reasons other than courage and uprightness, traits which have long been associated with our Forces. As we know the Indian Army, it is a generally closed unit which keeps itself confined to cantonments when not on border or war duty. Other than that, it is used for civilian duties too sometimes, like quelling riots, putting down in-terrain insurgency, working overtime during natural disasters and saving lives as usual. The credentials of the Indian Army were impeccable till the corruption charges stuck after the first of its kind sting operation unveiled some of its officers talking illegal shopping sprees and also women. All those years ago, it was a shocking revelation which almost shattered self-belief in many an Indian citizen. Almost a decade and a half later, the Indian Army is chasing bad headlines. Sometimes it is about the Army chief’s age which has the Government on clash mode, sometimes it is about the defence deals...

Dowry and domestic violence are as old as the world’s first ever crime — rape. In India especially, the two evils have co-existed for centuries without anything being done by the society to root them out. You might lull yourself into thinking that all is well on the urban Indian woman’s front, that she is empowered enough to take care of her rights and her dignity. But here’s a story that will tell you how wrong you can be, that we, as a society, are genetically impaired to take care of issues like domestic violence despite new laws, newer mindsets and education. And, alarmingly, it is the woman who decides to give in to suffering rather than think of opting out of a marriage to a rotten man. Take the case of X. She lives in a B-town of Punjab, is a graduate with specialisation in Library Science. Her parents married her off with much fanfare to a well-placed man who, on the face of it, appeared to be responsible. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Just under a year dow...

There is no stronger contender for being booked under the Domestic Violence Act than satellite television and its errant serial producers who have been dishing out raw torture to hapless, many a time stunned, audiences. And the quantum of torture that the new heroines of the post- saas bahu  serials are suffering leaves you too shell shocked to even flip the channel with your remote. Why are Indian women being battered on the soap dish, that too with all punches pulled, is bewildering, especially after the perceived end of a highly regressive phase in Ekta’s time. But nothing really has changed. It has only worsened through so called socially relevant shows. So, we have an Anandi who does well as a child bride and then gets dumped by her husband for another woman who he marries as Anandi waits with vacant eyes for an unknown number of episodes. Now, her husband’s other wife is pregnant but he is back trying to get close to Anandi! For now, the perpetual tears have been shif...