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Why India likes to lust after a 'sexy' woman in politics

Two days ago, a friend from Kolkata called and asked if I had heard about Partha Dasgupta. Some snooping around on social media and I discovered that Dasgupta, a self-professed "independent filmmaker", is a middle-aged gentleman with a respectable salt and pepper goatee, donning a kurta, the garb of Bong bourgeois. He was in the news for making a sexually derogatory comment about actress Roopa Ganguly, a BJP politician in West Bengal.

"At this age too, her waist and navel downwards are a source of desire (kamna) for men, and jealousy for women. The recruitment cell of the BJP clearly has a good eye," he reportedly said.

Ganguly, famous for her depiction of a feisty Draupadi in the BR Chopra directed magnum opus, Mahabharata, lashed back, saying: "Mr Partha has demonstrated a dirty mindset, most of the men in West Bengal will be ashamed of his comments!"

Bitter truth

Let's be frank, to men belonging to my mama's generation, read 50-plus, semi-balding, pot-bellied, semi-retired men, whose overweight wives spend more time watching shows like Dadagiri and soppy Bong serials post nine, or sweat it out over hilsa while stuffing deem sheddo (boiled egg) down the throats of their adolescent sons, Ganguly is perhaps the last surviving testament of their virility - a woman perceived as serious as well as sexy, in popular culture, as well as regional cinema. Someone who can act as well as turn men on. Read more here.