Aanchal Bajpai

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Holi: A festival for men

Since childhood, I loved playing with colours. When I was really tiny, all the cousins used to come over on the eve of Holi and we used to play on the terrace of our house with our little pichkaris and water balloons. When my parents moved to another city, I used to go to my maternal cousin’s house and all the kids of their locality used to play Holi in the playground. It was so much fun running around with those buckets and balloons in our hands. Then I GREW UP and everything literally changed. Suddenly I started feeling that this festival only belongs to men as I was feeling really unsafe around them. There were many incidences when I safeguarded myself from getting groped. Today it has become worst when I cannot even think of stepping outside my house in the morning hours when people become wild while playing Holi. I do not live in a gated society so whenever I open my window and look towards the main road during the peak hours of Holi I am unable to find a

The darkness behind that glam sham

I sometimes wonder how everyone around me has such a great life. On the contrary, I am still struggling among my career options. But when I actually look around, the one thing that looks real to me is loneliness. Considering the fast-paced environment we live in, we all are leaving our true selves behind. Recently, I read a story about a person who lied dead for 5 days on his desk and nobody bothered to check on him. These are the real repercussions of living a parallel life in a virtual world. We need to figure out where we are leading as a society where in our urban population 3 out of every 100 residents are estimated to suffer from depression and anxiety. Are we too occupied to even say hello or have a small talk with our fellow colleague instead of using that time to upload a picture of our Breakfast on Instagram? The reality is even after having many “so-called great buddies”, decently paying job, a great relationship we have become lonely. Most of the people around

Bollywood: Birth and Evolution

Indian Hindi Film Industry, popularly known as Bollywood, is one of the strongest global cultural ambassadors of a new India. It has derived its name from the term Hollywood, which was given to the American Film Industry. Indian Cinema is one of the richest industry which produces the maximum number of movies in the world at around 1,500 to 2,000 every year in over 20 languages. Indian Cinema has evolved over a period of time. In the year 1931, the first silent feature film of India titled Raja Harishchandra produced and directed by Dadasaheb Phalke was released. This is the reason he is considered as the father of the Indian film industry and the most coveted award of Indian Cinema is named after him as Dadasaheb Phalke Award. In 1831, first Indian sound film titled Alam Ara was released. It was the directorial venture of Ardeshir Irani. It became so popular among the audience that Police had to be called in few theatres to control the crowd. In 1937, the first colour fi

Am I the only one who didn’t like Padmaavat?

After a month long controversy, the most hyped movie of 2017 finally released on 25 th Jan 2018. Padmaavat is a typical Sanjay Leela Bhansali venture where you travel to an altogether different world with impeccable cinematography, jaw dropping sets, most beautifully crafted jewelry and costumes. He indeed pays attention to every single detail of his film except for the storyline. I really had high expectations from this movie as everyone around me was going gaga over this film. But to my disappointment, it was nowhere close to my expectations. I don’t understand if it’s because the cuts that were made while censor board certification or the actual story was written in such a manner. Also, one thing that bothered me the most is that Jauhar was an event that happened during that era. There was absolutely no need to glorify it and showcase it with such heavy background score as if it was such a proud moment. If it actually was such a proud practice then it would have not been

The Red Garden of Bangalore

If you have a keen interest in the history of Bangalore then you must be aware of the importance Lalbagh holds for this city. But because of being a Delhite, I was completely unaware of the beauty of this place. When I went to Bangalore for the first time, I just thought of exploring the city on my own. I quickly googled it and found Lalbagh at the first place. Next thing I did was to take an auto-rickshaw from the brigade road which costed me around Rs 80. My auto-rickshaw dropped me at the main gate of Lalbagh. Lalbagh actually has four gates Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern that leads to different sections of the city. There was no ticket charged as they have a specific timing (6 am - 9 am and 5:30 pm to 7 pm) during which they do not charge a single penny from the visitor, else the ticket cost was Rs 20 and the garden is kept open for all the visitors from 6 am to 7 pm. The moment I entered, I was mesmerized by the beauty of this garden. It is a 240 acre huge garde

Movie Review NEWTON: The story of Nutan Kumar

After watching his Bareilly ki Barfi, I have become a big fan of RajKummar Rao. An amazing actor, who can still make his audience believe in Indian cinema otherwise movies like Jab Harry Met Sejal have already murdered that belief long ago. Now coming to this movie “Newton”, it is refreshing to see this kind of a movie where you do not go with any kind of expectation but at the end get overwhelmed while leaving the theatre. When few brilliant actors like Raghubir Yadav, Pankaj Tripathi, Sanjay Mishra, Anjali Patil and of course Rajkummar Rao come together on a theatre screen, you can imagine the fireworks they will create. Every actor has done a marvelous job in this film. The movie revolves around the jungles and tribal areas of Chattisgarh. Rao has been given a troublesome task of conducting fair election in the Naxalite affected area where the tribal people had not even seen an electronic voting machine. He tries his best to do his job be it educating tribal people about