parotechnics

  This essay was written for a special issue of Art India called What Keeps You Awake At Night   Questions are curious things. Except when they’re not.   If there is one question that rings out a death knell in the world of dating (amorous, not historical) it is this: “tell me about you” (most commonly asked by men). It is as if the questioner has no confidence in a question’s poetic ability   to make a connection bloom “as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose.”   As if, unable to bear the ambiguity of a moment that might go in any direction, the asker puts the onus on the other person to reveal themselves and prove they are in fact worthy of attention. It is a faux question, its missing question mark hinting at the absence of what makes a question most potent and alive: curiosity. Curiosity is vulnerable and open. It says I want to know about you, rather than, prove that you are worth listening to.   Quite like it, is 2023’s domina

This is a longer version of my weekly column Paronormal Activity.       The finale of Koffee with Karan, in a season that set the bar low, featured Zeenat Aman and Neetu Singh. I wondered as I watched the strangely staccato proceedings, whether it was just because one Fabricare couch is not enough for two big lives? My mind kept going back to the more fluid fun in what is one of the show’s all-time best episodes – the finale of season 1 which also featured Zeenat Aman with Hema Malini. Even at the time they had seemed cooler than everyone else who had featured so far. Not only because they had the easy confidence of those who had led multi-layered lives and adventurous ones at that. But also, unlike the others, they no longer had any skin in that game. Their irreverence ran deeper, alluding to the discriminations and sexual exploitation they had survived in an unabashedly male-dominated industry.   That male domination was on full display in a Season 3 episode featuring Sanjay Dutt

      This essay was written for the 2023 year-end issue of Frontline You can read it on the website here Plain text version below the images. Links to related writings below that. RAHUL GANDHI: A DIFFERENT MASCULINITY   With the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi articulated a more open-armed masculinity of sweetness and hugs, but in a country so large and divided, his triumph of personal growth still struggles for electoral legitimacy.   PAROMITA VOHRA   For a while, after years of disdain, surprising numbers of people were all “I’m lovin’ it” when it came to Rahul Gandhi. They shared images from the Bharat Jodo Yatra and Instagram videos where university students asked Gandhi about his skin-care regimen (“I never use soap on my face”), vegetable preferences (“ sab chalta hai” , everything goes except spinach, peas and karela ), and matrimony (“I’m married to my job”).   As late as the morning of December 3, someone WhatsApped me a video of a charming