Known Turf

 I have been experimenting a bit with poetry videos in recent months. Here's the channel link:  https://www.youtube.com/@AnnieZaidi-writ...

CAN A WOMAN tell the unvarnished truth about what happened to her? This is the central question at the heart of Anand Ekarshi’s Aattam (The ...

Very pleased to hear that 'Two Way Street,' a short film I wrote has been named by Platform magazine as one of the shorts to look o...

In Western fairy tales, a witch is a scary woman who might ‘eat’ you, cooked or uncooked. In South Asian fairy tales and folklore, she might...

Freedom is not simply a matter of being fed. The technical lack of a cage also does not define freedom. She may be trained to perform on sta...

A short passage from an essay I wrote about Indian writing in English, and the insinuation that it was an elitist club: Occasionally, I also...

In other news, Facebook has finally successfully figured me out. It has my profile down pat:interested in literature (writing), films, cult...

Women's day, so I'm linking to the first documentary I made in 2015. It's online and free to watch now. I'll also say ...

As a child, I had thrilled to the story of a powerful, warrior woman on the throne of Delhi but had never wondered about who her ancestors ...

For a moment there, the prospect hovered on the horizon: a female 007. Fans need not worry. It hasn’t happened yet. However, a less Bond-lik...

I stopped to stare at another of Tiepolo's paintings, “The Finding of Moses”. The story is that Moses was a foundling. He was rescued ...

India went to the movies though, despite the rats, the torn seats and the hazards. We went because it was a now-or-never situation. If you ...

Consider the difference between watching a film in a foreign language and trying to read a book in that language. The film will still give...

Somewhere in the Haryanvi village of Mughwali, there is a little acquifer. That is to say, there is a hole in the earth, bricked around, a...

When does a borrowing turn into a theft? The answer is obvious – ask before borrowing, and do not go about saying that the goods are your ...

December 2012. India woke up to the shock of sexual assault that was so violent, it turned our collective stomach. For a while, our outrag...

I made a documentary film last year. Here's a link to the trailer: Here's a piece about it in The Hindu : “This film is no...

It could be that I'm blinded and deafened by the deliberate sexiness of the new Bollywood. But I often feel like feminine desire as de...

I cannot fully express the nature of my regret at not having done this post before. I had meant to, as soon as I walked out of the hall aft...

For a while now, I have been thinking about the need for 'drama' in stories, especially scripts. It is taken for granted that for a...