Primped, hairless and buff, the Hindi film hero has little in common with his predecessor. It’s a product, argues Paromita Vohra, of a new politics of aspiration.
WATCHING PRAKASH JHA’S Rajneeti (2010), I thrilled to what felt like a genuinely transgressive moment, a feeling rarely evoked by contemporary Hindi film. Ranbir Kapoor was in the shower. We saw his back, and then, he turned around. I gasped. My companion asked me what happened. “He has hair on his chest!” I exclaimed.
A male chest with hair on it has now become so absent from the landscape of Bollywood bodies that this altogether natural sight seemed almost forbidden; erotic in some unregulated way. It is not a sight that has since repeated itself on the mainstream Hindi screen, as far as I know.
The man with hair on his chest, his testosterone abundantly on display, has always been one of the traditional symbols of masculinity. I remember giggling through a conversation with my aunt and a friend of hers in the late 1980's, as they discussed the many positive qualities of Dharmendra. “That’s how a man should be,” said my aunt, with a big grin. “He-man, with hair on his chest.” Already, by then, the idea of a “he-man” was passé, cartoonish, a throwback to a notion of masculinity that did not fit with changing notions of gender.
We had begun to locate a man’s attractiveness not so much in conventional physical good looks, as in some intangible quality of sexiness or appeal. The rising stars at the time were the three Khans, still going strong today, of course, and they were all then boyish and carefree, and conspicuously not in the he-man mould. In this, they represented a continuity in what had been prevailing with heroic personae in Hindi films.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October - December 2016 من The Indian Quarterly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October - December 2016 من The Indian Quarterly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
The Image-Maker
Sukumar Ray’s most vivid images were saved for his classics of nonsense verse, but his singular eye, writes Nabarupa Bhattacharjee, found its earliest expression in photography
The Nawab's Last Sigh
Rudely awakened by the fact of independent India, an aristocrat in Meerut clung to his past. Now, he tells Sunaina Kumar, all he has left are his memories of a glorious age.
The Guest
Vaiyavan is the nom de plume of MSP Murugesan. Born in 1936, he did sundry jobs before obtaining postgraduate degrees by correspondence and then served as an English and Tamil teacher till his retirement in 1996. His writing career began in 1956. Multifaceted and prolific, he has to his credit a long list of short story collections, novels, plays, literary essays, poems and children’s stories. He has won several awards including Tamil Nadu government awards for best book on culture (1982) and best science book (1992) and the Malcolm Adiseshiah award for active participation in neo-literacy activities (1996). In his short stories and novels, Vaiyavan revels in a zest for life. Humaneness is the hallmark of his work, as the pain and pleasure, trials and tribulations of people in different rungs of society are described in minute detail. —CGR
The Birth of an Anthem
From right-wing slogan to moving patriotic song and now back to Hindu nationalistic war cry. Rimli Sengupta on the evolution of Vande Mataram
The Birth of a Parent
The beginning of a new life can create other strange new lives, reflects Manidipa Mandal
The Unknown Soldier
One man wondered and worried about his disappeared brother all his life.His granddaughter continued the search. Preksha Sharma resurrects a man and his story
The Art Scene
For the new kid on the block, it certainly has pedigree. The Centre for Con-temporary Art, housed within Delhi’s Bikaner House complex, finally opened its portals to welcome art aficionados during this year’s edition of the India Art Fair. Nature Morte was invited to stage the centre’s much-awaited inaugural show, an opportunity the gallery found too irresistible to pass up. The ambitious exhibition it mounted, The Idea of the Acrobat, occupied both floors of the recently renovated building and brought together the works of a dozen well known artists in a multitude of media. The line-up included Bharti Kher, Atul Dodiya, Dayanita Singh, Shilpa Gupta, Ayesha Singh, Khyentse Norbu and LN Tallur to name but a few.
Long, Long Ago
Arundhuti Dasgupta and Utkarsh Patel recount obscure creation myths from around the world, many echoing each other
Family Business
AT THE DINDUKKAL BUS DEPOT, the abortionist pushed her way through the crowd thronging the bus and finally managed to board it. She placed her travel bag beside her on the seat, calling out to her niece to hurry up. The young woman renewed her efforts to break free of the tangle of limbs and claim the seat reserved for her.
A Goan Childhood
Fragments of memory of a time long gone, from a life lived far away. By Selma Carvalho
