thoughts that arise from encounters with students....

"Lasch, by contrast, looked at the American and found him peering into a mirror, anxiously rating the figure staring back at him and wondering how to combat the inexplicable emptiness he felt."

Not just Americans if you ask me.

Comments

Anita Vachharajani said…
what men, you're not posting only...
October 14, 2007 at 9:21 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LUST STORIES 2: MORE YAWN SAMBANDH THAN ADULT FILMS

Image
This is a longer (much much longer) version of my Sunday Mid-day column Paronormal Activity on Lust Stories 2, which you can read here. Also, my review of Lust Stories 1 is here - Lust to Dust In a time saturated with pornography, what can a collection of Lust Stories offer us? Perhaps a chance to experience the meanings of what sex does in our life, something that reveals an aspect of humanness beyond the functional arousals of porn. I am not sure Lust Stories S2 does this much. Like the first season, this set too features only one woman director (like, why babes? Yeh quota kisne decide kiya?). The other three films, are made by men. One film – R. Balki’s – is a #BoreMatKarYaar bhashan to shame any dadiwala. The other two are entirely fixated on the climax, and not at all on the cinematic sensuality that might build us up to it. All three are absorbed in the pleasure of their own self-congratulations. If this tells us something about how Indian men think about sex, you will agree fri
Read more

RAHUL GANDHI: A DIFFERENT MASCULINITY

Image
      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
Read more

THE VANISHING LIE-0-METRE OR WHAT I LEARNED FROM KOFFEE WITH KARAN SEASON 8

Image
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
Read more