Life-en-treats

Why is Bollywood one of the most important influences for beauty criteria in India? Bollywood can be said to be one of the most important influences in recent times not only on beauty standards but a whole host of other issues as well. As has been argued, it is the carrier of modernity/west itself to the Indian masses. Bollywood defines many things--moral codes (even if through contrasts), lifestyles, culture etc.  It projects a “fun life” as opposed to real lives that are far more complicated. As a bridge to the west, many of Bollywood’s values comes from the west and its beauty criteria never really accepts the average Indian face as “OK.” As a power visual medium, it sets the criteria for beauty in India and on western terms; faces cannot have culture-specific features but must seem neutral! Bollywood’s melodramatic nature has not gone unnoticed by the Indian middle class and anyone influenced too much by it, is often considered naive. Yet Bollywood has over time shaped...

Hard work has its rewards, people say. But in the long years of doing a PhD, which is already its own reward, I expected none. Academics, especially don't care so much for worldly stuff (modern-day ascetics they are!). Unexpected appreciation is truly thrilling. Not knowing what else to do with it, I am posting some of it here. I might want to look these up a few years from now...smile about it or even think "oh please, all that was nothing!" Here it is anyway... "Hey Sushumna...I know, it has been such a long time...We have not spoken much in college...but, i would always admire the way you would speak and give an analysis of all the poems that we were asked to interpret :)You were such an inspiration..."  "Dear Sushumna Kannan, I have just read your incisive appreciation of my book Excursions on a google site, and wanted to thank you for such a deeply serious essay – that better understands my ethnography than the reviewers in US anthropology j...