Metrosexually Speaking

I was watching Dhoom 2 yesterday. It was no great shakes, despite the special effects, and the dance/singing sequences. Attempts to amp up the emotion with a Russian roulette scene couldn't really save the movie whose tone veered all over the place.

Despite this, there are some things you can pick up, even watching a film like this. In particular, the two lead males, the cop and the thief cook.

That may seem like no big deal to you.

So what if they cook?

I know many Indian males cook. With sexual segregation still rather common among Indians (it's still generally taboo for men and women to live together unless they are married), guys must learn to cook, at least, passably, unless they plan to eat out all the time.

Even so, once a couple gets married, I'm sure the expectation is for the woman to cook.

In Dhoom 2, the men are shown to be expert cooks. The cop makes a fish in a skillet. The thief has wine and salad, but can whip up unhealthy food at the flip of a hat (is that even a legitimate expression?).

I pointed this out to one of the Indians working with our company, and he says there's a trend to portray metrosexual males.

And that too struck me. A term that I thought was confined to English speaking countries has broached the desi divide because a typical IT guy in India does indeed speak English, and their access to the Internet is nearly as unfettered as mine, so why not pick up phrases like "metrosexual"? Thomas Friedman famously said that the world is flat, and by that, he meant the physical distances that separate us are bridged by, most commonly, the Internet.

Indeed, Indian movies portray a wholesome kind of living, because of its insistence on a wholesome kind of lifestyle, perhaps akin to what went on in the 50s. Perhaps more decadence lies in real life, as it did in the 50s, but the movie industry is not ready, at least, not now, to give us that ugliness.

So, while Dhoom 2 didn't succeed as entertainment, it still exposes a sense of what India may become though actions that seem inconsequential, but may indeed, speak volumes.