Aseem Chhabra lists the best non-Hindi language films he watched in 2020, with the hope that they will have a wider reach in the new year.
Here is a look at some of Aseem Chhabra's favourite memories of 2020 in Hindi cinema, performances by well-known and new actors, special moments in films and shows.
'We're going to campaign across the country to convince more candidates to endorse some/all of these issues -- and hold them to their promises if and when they are elected.'
'One of the most important lessons I learnt from Babulal was on stoicism.' 'As a young man, he had lost the fingers of his right hand in an accident.' 'Without missing a beat, he taught himself to use the spade and shovel with his left hand and carried on working,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
'The social security system in India provides minimal support to the elderly poor,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
'The easy availability of funds has enabled us to not only hire the best faculty, but has also made it possible for us to retain them with the best possible infrastructure -- labs, grants etc,' Ashoka University VC Malabika Sarkar tells Geetanjali Krishna.
'Our throwaway culture today has little room for mochis and rafoogars who concealed rips and tears with imperceptible stitches and great skill,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
'Whether it's a morning walk, an evening swim or an afternoon workout in the gym, just get moving.'
The Naz Foundation is trying to sensitise workplaces towards the LGBT community, reports Geetanjali Krishna.
'I sighed, wondering what we'd eat if all farmers took jobs in the city and all their fields degenerated into land for sale,' notes Geetanjali Krishna.
'I had the strangest feeling that my childhood home had burnt and disappeared on my parents' funeral pyres,' he said. Hardly any of his family lived there now. Migration or death had claimed them all. It seemed to be full of strangers. 'Then I realised that from their perspective, perhaps there was only one stranger -- me..." Babu Lal tells Geetanjali Krishna.
'No one really knows whether it is somehow better to go raging and fighting into the dark night, or close one's eyes quietly and give in to fate.' 'But a funeral with music, tinsel and acceptance -- not unlike most New Year festivities -- seems like a better send-off than any other,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
'If we're able to make a child laugh or feel happy to come to school, more than half the battle is won,' Katha Founder Geeta Dharmarajan tells Geetanjali Krishna.
'Dangal gives people the impression that Geeta and Babita Phogat's rise to fame as wrestlers is a one-off phenomenon.' 'Many young wrestlers in Haryana are capable of reaching the same heights as the Phogat sisters, but there are few opportunities to train or make a living from wrestling in the village.'
'I don't know how long the small-scale handmade sector can survive,' a shoemaker from Hisar tells Geetanjali Krishna.
'It is the common people, not lawyers and judges, who are the stakeholders of the judiciary.'
Geetanjali Krishna explains why this may slow down India's fight against corruption.
'Whether she pursued academics or art, there was one sort of tyranny she'd probably never escape -- her father's,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
God bless Ritesh Batra, raves Sukanya Verma.
Man loses Rs 1.5 lakh from under his pillow. Geetanjali Krishna reveals what happens next.
In rural Bengal, people still believed that widows were simply biding their time on earth after their lord and master had departed from it, says Geetanjali Krishna.
'Around the dawn of the millennium, it seemed that the sun was finally setting on these elaborate home weddings.' 'As the clamour for 'live' counters of grilled fish, pasta and khao suey grew, without even realising it, Gopal Pandey slowly started going out of fashion,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
The Human Rights Law Network -- a group of committed lawyers, paralegals and social activists -- is making justice accessible to people who can't defend themselves.
'The children of today see Bollywood heroines dancing to item numbers in clingy georgette saris with bright gold machine embroidery.' 'To them, the Sambalpuri saris look and feel like shapeless, dull sacks.' 'The tragedy of the weaver isn't that he doesn't get enough respect and understanding from people like us,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
Moushumi Chatterjee on her co-stars and how they guided her throughout her career.
'It's the children that matter. They are the future,' Bhagaban Mohanta, who was born without legs, tells Geetanjali Krishna.
He will now have to submit to the two-year jail term handed down to him.
Flesh-and-blood people can be invisible even when they are standing right in front of us, says Geetanjali Kishna.
A journey that can teach us all a thing or two about resilience.
Meet the inspiring youth-led YP Foundation.
Perhaps, more daughters will feel more loved if the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme were to be replaced, says Geetanjali Krishna.
'People like me worry about our next meal, not about what meat we eat... and we certainly don't have the luxury that you have, of holding vigils for faceless people we've never known.'
Monika explains that girls like her living in villages have no access to fashion. Access to "nice clothes" and the freedom to wear them, she tells Geetanjali Krishna, could go a long way in developing the confidence of young girls like herself.
Going beyond the tiger fixation at Pench National Park.
'Sick in my heart that people could think that half our population couldn't "help" wanting to prey on the other half, I mused that the faceless dead girl on the road wasn't just a victim of murder, but also of the misogynistic society she had spent her short life in,' says Geetanjali Krishna.
The 13th edition of Mumbai International Film Festival honoured several women documentary filmmakers recently.
And it happens in Nagaland.
Are you an innocent smartphone user in a perilous online world, asks Geetanjali Krishna.
'All the bride's beleaguered parents wanted, they said, was a simple wedding without any unnecessary problems.'
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