I loved this article, read it in the paper. Teja and I've often lamented about how few eccentrics one seems to meet in Mumbai, as compared to some other smaller cities. What would the world be without nutcases, dhoonis?
Thanks Banno - well I was amazed by how popular this column and the one on Mithun became so perhaps we have to take hope in the fact that people at least still crave the nutcases even though they don't have the courage to be that way.. for the time being perhaps.
This essay was first published on First Post Paromita Vohra • May 14, 2020 The Bois Locker Room and the crisis of our society in its current breakdown have a lot to say about each other. Both of them tell us that we have reached the limits of the system we live in. If the way out is together, then we need an education on what it means to do that. In 1984, Delhi’s St. Stephen’s college was in the news for a time-honoured tradition: chick charts. Tradition is such a flexible word — making a practice sound unchangeable. In fact the college started admitting women students only in 1975 (it had been co-ed in the past, from 1928-1949). The nine years that women had been attending the college, was enough to term tradition, the frequent posting on the official college notice board, of Top 10 charts, made by male students, rating women on their breasts, butts, legs, mouths — and sometimes maybe, smiles. Smiles were what most women apparently used to mask the discomfort of t...
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...
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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