Prapti Kakati

Moving out of your ancestral house when you’ve just started developing consciousness is a huge deal. I did not know what it would be like in the town – it was my version of moving out to the city. Parents decided they did not want a joint family anymore so they would construct a house in the town. Nobody asked my opinion of course; I was merely 11 years old. I remember the day I left home to go live in a very small rented house in the town. I cried. A lot. They said we would be back here every other week. I knew it wasn’t true. And my pre-teen intuition was right. It did not. We visited, sometimes. But it was never the same. My friends from the village looked at me as if I have come from some alien land. I went to the ground to play with them but it wasn’t the same. Both sides tried to pretend it was all okay; it was normal. It wasn’t. I wasn’t one of them anymore. I was someone from “the town”. We moved a few months after my dad’s younger sister got married. She and I used to sleep ...

As I sit down in the morning with a cup of tea, someone passes by the window blasting the latest Bollywood sensation – the very amazing song with never-seen before, extremely innovative lyrics -  “Hey aaj kal dil saala/Bounce kare hai mere seene mein Milne lagi hai tu/Jab se ishq maheene mein”  - the famous, Beyonce Sharma Jayegi . Well, Beyonse * now, because, you know, changing a letter changes the entire inherent meaning of the song. Also, legal issues, you know? Beyonce who? We only know Beyonse. Does it make sense? No, it does not. But bear with me, it gets better.  After the cardio that was the ‘dil-bouncing’, we move on to the very (insert word) – keelis, along with the beautiful lyrics having a lot of non-problematic non-racist undertones - “Bhadkeeli nakhreeli/ Chamkeeli lachkeeli/ Tu jo kamar yeh hilayegi, Ho tujhe dekh ke goriya/ Beyonce sharma jaayegi” I mean, where do I start? I do not trust mainstream Bollywood with issues like women-empowerment. And this so...

  None of the stories are related to one another. None of them have any underlying meaning. All of them are very much bland. I love my Family. I come home after six months, four of which I spent alone in my hostel because of the Covid-19 lockdown. The day I land, we are inundated with calls - from most of the family of course. However, a particular close-family member calls us up at 12 in the night, a couple minutes before I reach home. He had apparently forgotten to give us a call. Understandable. But why 12 in the night? Unless you knew it would take us a lot of time to go through the screening and allocation processes in the airport and the swab tests at the local centre. And it did, it took us 5 hours to complete these formalities and reach home. Seems like you knew about that, did not you? Well, that was awkward. A couple days later. Our family is in home-quarantine. But we have not been that strict with prohibiting any outside contact since my mother has been ...

DOR (2006) - A Review  As a kid, I remember watching this movie on television, and being mesmerized by it. A few days ago, I came across it incidentally, and could not resist the temptation to re-watch it. So here goes. Dor, is a movie by Nagesh Kukunoor, featuring Ayesha Takia, Gul Panag and Shreyas Talpade in the lead roles. The film is an adaptation of the Malayalam movie, Perumazhakkalam (2004)  and   revolves around the lives of two radically different women – Zeenat and Meera, and the companionship that develops between them. The story starts off as a quest, and becomes a simultaneous social critique as well a display of female bond and solidarity, and it undoubtedly one of the most powerful movies I have watched till date. The story starts with a series of picturesque scenes from the hills of Himachal Pradesh, accompanied by the brilliance of music by Salim-Sulaiman. The song, “ Yeh hosla, kaise jhuke, yeh aarzoo, kaise ruke ”, is echoed till ...

                                                        It had been very hectic the past couple of days – classes, assignments and internships circling over my head like vultures, ready to devour my corpse the moment I lay dead from the stress. I got out of the house at 8 in the morning and sat through what seemed like a seemingly endless train of classes. To top that, I realized I had to go deal with a bunch of 11-year olds soon after, and I just wanted to drop dead at that point. Salvation is a hoax. At least the one that is promised in this life. I had prayed to the God I don’t believe in, “make the kids behave today, please?” Of course, he didn’t listen. But it’s just the 6574 th time this has happened, and I am sure my day is approaching (along with a few bottles of wine as a reward for my patience). I mean he has to ...

ROUTINES "Agla station, Vishwavidyalaya." I hate routines. I actively detest going to the same places or working on the same things.   But life places you in weird situations sometimes. Its been seven months now, going to the same place of work, teaching the same kids. It has become a routine, but strangely, I haven’t started hating this one. I actually like it. Although I hate admitting this, my conscience knows I’m right, and I can’t do anything about it. So, here it goes. I walk the same street to the metro station from college. The street has always been familiar, with a picturesque pavement, lined with trees. I enter the metro station through the same gate, climb down the same flights of stairs. I wait for the terminating train, and get merged into the crowd, pushing, pulling and struggling to get a seat. I always do get the seat, though. I am smart enough (these are my little ways of countering my inferiority complex and my intense self-loathing). I put on ...

SUNSHINE                                                         Rodali. One of the hundreds of kids in G.B Road, the daughter of a sex worker. A cute, little creature, she has a loud, commanding voice. “Ma’amji”, she says, “yaha hum khel rahe hain, darwaza band kar denge, aap nahin kholna”. My weak-willed, non-assertive self agrees reluctantly, even though I have work in that very room. She takes confident strides to the other room, ordering the other 4-5-year-olds, sometimes even pushing them forward. They take out some mats from a drawer and go into the other room to play “ghar, ghar’. Rodali, everyone’s darling at school. She used to hop from lap to lap, stealing kisses, until another cute kid from the same ‘kotha’(room) got enrolled, and her ‘popularity’ somewhat decreased. But she isn’t jealous, no she isn’t. Instead, s...