On 24-Mar-10, at 11:02 AM, Shoba Narayan wrote:
The TamBrahm analogy was because I know so many men who hate Roy and they always describe their dislike of her with this dispassionate, rational, logical, arguing-equations-in-IIT tone that bugs the shit out of me. As if it was self-evident that Roy is an inferior writer and a hypocrite activist... when in fact this dislike goes deeper and more visceral than that...and I am curious why.
Let's assume that the people who argue in a dispassionate, rational and logical fashion are, most of the time, looking for a similar thing from their reading material. On a random blog on the internet, when faced with what appears to be carefully crafted disingenuity designed to jam reason and logic and replace it with outrage, such a person can mentally tag the writer as a troll and move on.
But what do you do when the troll has a Booker Prize? The stuff will turn up everywhere. It will get emailed to you and shared on facebook. A strong reaction is hardly surprising.
We are surrounded by rabble rousers and agenda-pushers, even well- intentioned ones; in India it's power to stunt rational thought and replace it with righteous mob anger is well documented. I'm willing to take Roy's good intentions at face value, but I don't think it's too much to ask that a de facto cultural ambassador for our country rise above that kind of nonsense.
-Taj.
