ATOMIC RAKSHASI
the Art of Rhea Daniel

While I’ve examined women’s roles in movies (because I felt there was such a dearth of complex ones), it jumped out at me how many men in Guillermo del Toro’s movies fit into archetypal fatherhood roles, their characters too being complex, sometimes contradictory.

Should you come across a female narcissist, your safest option is to get away quickly; that is, if you even have the discernment to spot her. Not all of them are perched comfortably at the top and can’t always be identified by rank.

(Photo Creative Commons License, FMT) When the time came to put together our class magazine, I was sure to turn up with a few good portraits. I was the artist of the class, after all, and I wasn’t much good at anything else, so it was my time to shine. I basked in the quiet ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ that my skills provoked. Nothing, however, compared to the day that I drew Tom Cruise. Frankly, I didn’t know what the big deal was about. I had been reading a comic book (I don’t remembe

Everyone knows that the traditional Indian family raises its sons to be providers and daughters to be mothers, but the script of The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) goes one further, insisting that even if The Husband is incompetent, lazy, egotistical and insecure, he still expects to be treated like a king in his house. He has an inalienable right to his wife’s body and her servitude. We needed this premise because his value in both his own and society’s eyes, regardless of whe

Beauty is important female currency in patriarchy, and everyone, consciously or unconsciously, advocates for it.

The generic stalker has a relationship with his prey, and the relationship only goes so far as the prey gives. Anything is encouragement...

When I was in primary school, an English lesson hit me a little deeper than usual. It was the story of Gauri the Dreamer , generically known as The Milkmaid’s Dream . Gauri milks her cow early one morning and on the way to market, begins to think about how she would multiply her fortune when she sells her milk. She’d buy chickens with the profits from her milk business, the chickens would lay eggs and she’d earn even more money. Because of her inattentiveness, she trips and f

It’s been twelve years and Vinayak is old enough to know that his mother has no status and therefore, neither does he. A lack of status here