I’ve seen fights, disputes, grow, fester, erupt into bouts of violence: disagreements become irrevocable, boundaries are crossed, and then, tempers flare. Punches and slaps are thrown, sometimes half-heartedly, sometimes in a desperate flurry, sometimes shirt collars are grabbed as the ‘fight’ turns into an ungainly grappling session with headholds and chokeholds that aim to incapacitate.Continue reading “Have Gun, Will Settle Dispute: The Dangerous, Alluring Temptation”
Category Archives: Politics
ISIS, America, ‘Failed States,’ And Gun Control
In the Orlando massacre, ISIS met, once again, the enemy it wanted: a society riven by a culture of violence, hyper-masculinity (and its inevitable attendant, homophobia), awash in guns, susceptible to fascist demagoguery, infected by a paranoid, self-destructive Islamophobia. That society’s lawmakers have passed over two hundred anti-LGBT bills in recent times; they also refuse toContinue reading “ISIS, America, ‘Failed States,’ And Gun Control”
‘But I Am From Brooklyn’
A few days ago, I reported–on Facebook, where else–a conversation with my daughter that went something like this: Her: Papa, where’s India? Me: It’s a country in Asia, sweetie, on the other side of the world. Her: We can drive there? Me: No, we have to fly. I was born there, you know. I’m fromContinue reading “‘But I Am From Brooklyn’”
On Driving Drunk: Bloody Idiot
In the terrible, often carefully hidden, mental category of ‘things I have done in the past that I am not proud of, and indeed ashamed of,’ my driving drunk–on many occasions–must take dubious pride of place. I learned to drive as a teenager, and often drove during my college years–through New Delhi’s even-then chaotic roads–borrowingContinue reading “On Driving Drunk: Bloody Idiot”
James Baldwin On A White Policeman’s Eyes
In James Baldwin‘s If Beale Street Could Talk (Bantam, New York, 1974) Fonny, a young black man, is in jail for rape–his supposed victim’s eyewitness identification is probably mistaken; ‘outside,’ his pregnant girlfriend, Tish, wonders about the policeman, Bell, who arrested Fonny. Bell had wanted to arrest Fonny for assault ever since he had violentlyContinue reading “James Baldwin On A White Policeman’s Eyes”
Brock And Dan Turner: Rapists And Their Mentor Fathers
Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman. This All-American hero, well-versed in the rituals of manhood that center around heavy drinking and sexually assaulting women, had to be interrupted by two Good Samaritans (also male), who unlike Turner, did not find anything remotely sexy in his violence. Brock Turner found himself in court, and there, facingContinue reading “Brock And Dan Turner: Rapists And Their Mentor Fathers”
The Doctor And The Silenced Patient
In Confessions of a Medicine Man: An Essay in Popular Philosophy (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000, pp. 109-110) Alfred I. Tauber writes: Health care providers have to listen, respond, and generally account for the subjective experience of a patient’s complaint. So much of our discontent can be traced to the too little time the physician spendsContinue reading “The Doctor And The Silenced Patient”
The Convenient Construction Of The Public-Private Distinction
Revolutions are public affairs; revolutionaries bring them about. They fight in the streets, they ‘man’ the barricades, they push back the forces of reaction. And then, they go home for the night, to a meal and a warm bed. There, they rest and recuperate, recharging the batteries of uprising, ready to battle again the nextContinue reading “The Convenient Construction Of The Public-Private Distinction”
RIP Muhammad Ali: Once And Always, The Greatest
Muhammad Ali was the first Black Muslim American I heard of. Before his name entered my immature consciousness, I did not know Americans could be Black or Muslim. (This revelation came to me during a classroom trivia quiz; ‘Muhammad Ali’ was the answer to the question ‘Who is the world heavyweight champion?’) It is hardContinue reading “RIP Muhammad Ali: Once And Always, The Greatest”
The ‘Ideal Marriage’ And Its Painful Sexual Ignorance
In Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992, pp. 32-33), Richard Rhodes writes: Somehow I acquired a copy of Dutch physician T. H. van de Velde‘s Ideal Marriage, published in the United States in 1926, the most popular marriage manual in American until The Joy of Sex came along. Ideal MarriageContinue reading “The ‘Ideal Marriage’ And Its Painful Sexual Ignorance”
Samir Chopra 