The Marilyn Monroe in Shah Rukh Khan
To know why Shah Rukh Khan is a superstar, all you have to do is rent Dulha Mil Gaya (Trinidad, Fardeen Khan, enough said). His 15-minute cameo lifts the 2010 movie out of purgatory and gives it one of the most romantic gestures in Bollywood history, a middle-aged millionaire who gets up early so when...
Before you slutwalk, please kneel
A FORTNIGHT AGO, Umang Sabharwal, a 20-yearold journalism student caught the global wave of SlutWalks (12 since April 2011) and decided to organise one in Delhi. Umang is now in the strange position of having to answer for the state of Indian women. She has also to submit to the self-appointed committees that want her...
Damn right, it’s better than yours
IN HER memoir, Bone Black, American writer bell hooks wrote about growing up coveting the tremendous fun and sorority of black women getting together to straighten each other’s hair. As an adult she recognised that the hatred she and other black women felt for their hair was tied to their acceptance of white supremacy. Though...
So did you watch the Billion dollar curfew
One cannot ascribe to it any turn-of-the-century suspicion, the kind of narrow-eyed glare of philosophers that equated massive sports events with totalitarian rallies. That kind of tingle we can still reserve for the machine-tooled beauty of Chinese ceremonies. In Delhi, one can only smile at the slightly off-key kitsch — the Bollywood tadka, the child...
We are not like you. We don’t think so much
YOU’VE HEARD people say, “I thought my parents were liberal.” This is the moment when a lover is brought home. The moment when you hear parents using unfamiliar words in your mother tongue. You learn precise invective for people your family considers alien. Words that ascribe meaning to the length of legs, the size of...
Sex, Lies and Homework
IN BENGALURU, the staff of a large old-fashioned Catholic school for boys clutched their heads when they found a 9-year-old distributing porn. “There was a picture for every sexual position,” said the young counsellor called in to talk to the class. He was both shocked and amused. His shock was largely reserved at the elaborate...
I Like to Watch
YOU CAN go watch Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Dibakar Banerjee’s set of three short interconnected films, and get excited about sex and video cameras. Surveillance and voyeurism have been hotbutton themes in the art world for a while. And it may seem like popular culture is now following in sweaty excitement. Or you could ignore...
The Malayali Man
N A COUNTRY as diverse as ours, communities survive on stereotypes of the ‘other’. It’s a way of classifying and ordering an otherwise anarchic world. In this wealth of comforting pre-judgments, the vein of Malayali stereotypes is particularly golden, replete with two-line jokes and an accent everyone imagines they can imitate. Scratch an Indian lightly...
Why I wear a Hijab
The last encounter in this search for hijabis was the stuff of journalistic cliché. The meeting with naqaab-clad Tabassum in a seedy Old Delhi teashop where we are the only women could be the opening chapter of a book called Lipstick Hijabi or some such easy juxtaposition. Tabassum is shopping for Eid gifts in the...
Why Indian Men are Still Boys
A FEW YEARS AGO, a group of young men, all Bengaluru- based lawyers, were asked who bought their underwear. Their answer bears out the seemingly arbitrary nature of this intrusion. Of the five men, all in their late twenties, all wellgroomed and intelligent, all given to the unconventional in their personal and political lives, only...
Famila
Today seems like a good day to post this here. Everyone remembers with great clarity the first time they met Famila or the first conversation they had with her. A filmmaker friend says with mild embarrassment that she remembers the way, the exact way, in which the light was falling on Famila’s face the first...
Bootstrap Astronauts
ANATOLE BROYARD, the New York Times’ legendary literary critic denied his black heritage almost to his deathbed. His is one of the most discussed and perhaps most successful efforts at ‘passing’. It inspired books, essays, even perhaps the germ of Philip Roth’s plot for The Human Stain. Broyard hinted at the pain of his double...
