More on Gandhi's (bi)sexuality. Wait, the Mahatma or Rahul?

The nerd and the junkie in me are delighted with the craziness in this world, including all the attention on Gandhi's (bi)sexuality.  So, here I am three weeks after that first post, yet again yakking about it :)

The best one I read about all this was in the New Yorker.  But, that will be towards the end of this post.  Because, well, here is Aravind Adiga writing that Gandhi was the symbol of manliness in a country that was otherwise devoid of strong male figures, and where, he quotes MJ Akbar here, young boys were forever in the shades of the saris of their mothers and grandmothers. 

He exaggerates, but then he is a fiction writer :)  Plus, Adiga seems to confuse courage with sexuality and manliness. 

There were no Charles de Gaulles or Fidel 
Castros to inspire us. Independent India’s most important statesman,
 Jawaharlal Nehru, suffered from an air of masculine inadequacy, 
stemming from his failure to forestall the Chinese invasion of India 
in 1962. Liberal, tolerant Indian politicians almost always looked
 like pathetic specimens of masculinity; the charismatic men were 
either those who had advocated military action against the British—or the even more macho Hindu nationalists.

I am all the more convinced that Adiga should restrict himself to fiction, where he excels.

The New Yorker has one hilarious piece on this: "I was Gandhi's boyfriend"  ... I envy these writers for being so creative :) Here is one really funny moment there:

he eventually dumped me for this German-Jewish bodybuilder, and I warned him, I said, “Hello, been there, and I know that at first it sounds hot, but pretty soon it’s all ‘Nein, I can’t stay out late, because I have to get up early for the gym,’ and ‘Nein, we can’t do your rally for South Africa, because we’ve got my cousin’s Seder, remember?’ And his mother will be all ‘So, Mr. Gandhi, I’m told you like to lie down in front of railroad cars, to demonstrate a political point. Can you make a living from this?’ ”

 Meanwhile, there is loud talk that Rahul Gandhi is gay.  

Who cares, right?  Makes for interesting discussions, and blog posts though!