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Hi...I'm Roopa. I'm also a messy optimist! I'm an academic-cum-artist. I'm a writer, filmmaker and professor of creative writing. Academically, I've a Double Masters and a Phd and artistically I've written and directed my own film for NFDC, published two non-fiction books from Penguin. one of which (Star Dust) won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema in 2004. These days...I'm still writing, working on my own lifestyle website (please check it out - www.themessyoptimist.com), drinking hot chai and grappling with grief. Please feel free to drop me a line anytime at [email protected]
I’m a Hardcore Feminist who LOVED Animal. By Roopa Swaminathan Sorry, not sorry. If watching Animal was triggering enough for many, then I apologize for my take on the film which might trigger you enough to want to harm someone. You’ve been warned. I’m a raging, toxicity-hating, card-carrying member of the feminist club. But… I […]
"Look at us. You're an engineer who is reduced to cleaning your house and I'm an architect who is a wife, mother, cook, chauffeur, tutor...what happened to us?"
The only way to go forward is for us to come up with our own million-dollar idea and find a buyer for it. Else, our shit's going to get canned. The tension is killing me.
So I should've watched it. At least for the sake of women's solidarity, I should have watched it by now. If feminists like me did not support Barbie, who else will?
Bridging the Divide: Forging Friendships in an Increasingly Polarized World I apologize in advance to all of the liberal readers for this article. But it needs to be said. Please understand that this is coming from someone who is a bleeding-heart liberal herself. Last month I got back from a 9-day women’s only packaged tour […]
When it’s OK to let the Sociopath within you come out to play I’ve always felt that I could be a sociopath-in-the-making. A mild one but one nonetheless. So, I can’t go into details because one needs to be street-smart about confessionals on media platforms. You never know what/who you will need in the future, […]
She did not pretend to be coquettish and try to lower her voice. She went for the jugular and given the empty vast space – her already loud voice reverberated.
Most of us speak at least two languages fluently. And we zoom in and out between the varied differences in the words, the notes, the intonations, the beat, the tonality, and other linguistic details fluidly and without a thought.
Nisha looked up with a start. It was the lady in question. With a huge smile on her face, Nisha got up and hugged Anu. "You look lovely as always, you little monster!" Nisha complimented.
Nisha and her MIL met up once a month to catch up - woman to woman. Neither of them was very chatty with each other although both were known to talk their ear off with others.
How on earth was her male chauvinist of a husband looking as peaceful and placid as the Queen of f...ing England? "You're OK with this? Your sister marrying a guy who doesn't want to work?" Nisha asked Rahul shrilly.
How do you do it, Roopa? Aren’t you scared to travel alone as a woman? Is it safe? Don’t you feel alone? And lonely?
If a couple split up (or get married) after years of dating, why should we assume that its the woman who has more to lose (or win)?
Sit your ass down critics...Malala Yousafzai took a bullet to her head instead of bowing down to pressures far more serious. If she decided to marry, I’m pretty sure she knows what she’s doing!
Travel for leisure will slowly come back as the pandemic recedes, and travelling solo as a woman is great fun, if you know how to do it right.
This is a HARD blog post to write. For someone who was so unforgiving of others for their discriminatory behaviour, I‘d been casually discriminatory myself!
As she dragged herself to the kitchen to make coffee for her husband, breakfast for him and their kids, and then pack their lunches and send them off to work and school respectively… she felt another spasm hit her hard.
For most women, it's a rite of passage, isn't it? At some stage in our lives, we have all said the following (say it with me loudly and clearly, ladies), "I LOVE BAD BOYS!"
Unlike actresses in the 90s who were hounded out of Bollywood the second they inched closer to being 30…the same Bollywood is now ruled by women who are well into their 30s and 40s.
Having travelled a lot (40 countries & more), I am waiting to get inside an airplane! If you're planning a foreign trip, these 12 tips will help in getting a successful visa.
Words matter, in the way we speak in gender terms. A man is ambitious. A woman is a bitch. A powerful man's voice is deep and dignified while a woman is shrill and hysterical.
Simone Biles pulled out of the Olympics citing mental health issues, but everything has two sides to it. What could these be, in this case?
After I lost my parents, the things people said to me was like another tragedy. My tips on what NOT to say when someone has lost a loved one.
Lady Kitty Spencer, Princess Diana's niece got married to a man 30 years older - and that reminded us of how a much older man is given a pass, unlike an older woman in a relationship who is brutally trolled.
Sarpatta Parambarai is an excellent example of how the director Pa Ranjith took an old story that gets us nostalgic while giving it a fresh treatment.
If you are going to make a gangster movie now – in 2021 - it has to be more than a biographical portrait of a gangster who does bad things in order to do good for his community.
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