optimists and pessimists, sadists and masochists


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RAHUL GANDHI: A DIFFERENT MASCULINITY

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      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 Wh...
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Bas ik jhijhak - to Papa on his birthday

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Since my father passed away in 2005, I’ve tried on his birthday to write something for him, to remember him in. I haven’t always managed to do it here – of late it has been small things on Facebook I guess. Today too, it is almost the end of the day when I have the opportunity to write this, a fact that as usual would have made him tsk tsk about my misplaced priorities, my lack of real discipline. There were many things about my father, which, as time has gone by, and as I too am older, with a head and heart more weathered than before, I see now, were truly special things. One of these was his love of poetry, especially Urdu poetry. As a child in Lahore and even after moving to Delhi during Partition, he had studied only Urdu and English. I am not sure where his great love for Urdu poetry came from actually – whether it was part of the cultural milieu or whether he had acquired it from some friends. But I knew it was always there. Ghalib was his favourite poet. I did not understa...
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REINVENTING RAHUL / RAHUL...NAAM TOH SUNA HOGA

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    This essay for Frontline, June 24 issue, builds on my earlier essay for them, A Different Masculinity/The Loser's Challeng e exploring the interweave of political culture, aesthetics and gender and suggesting a different frame of poetic politics to think about culture (and life). If you prefer to read plain text it is below the pdf version       REINVENTING RAHUL Plain text version   Reinventing Rahul Through this election, a new Rahul emerged: confident, irreverent, assertive, yet accessible. With even Gen Z deigning to call him a “thirst trap”, it is quite the journey from Pappudom.   PAROMITA VOHRA   On June 4, even as election results unfolded a changed political equa- tion, Rahul Gandhi appeared in an intriguing place: the X account @archivedilfs. Expanding the acronym DILF may be more than this venerable journal can bring itself to do. For those who do not know, it stands for what some people might li...
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