Sensational Love Scandals and their After-lives

Abstract

This article revisits the sensational Nanavati case that captured public imagination half a century ago, examining its creation as an iconic media event through photographic images in the tabloid Blitz and its immediate after life in a film, Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke (The Roads that Lead to Love, R.K. Nayyar, 1963). Examining the proliferation of detail around this sudden and unexpected event, the article argues that even though the tabloid pushed the borders of photographic representation toward the realm of speculation and even fantasy, there were registers of affect that an evidential form could not express. This is where cinema made an entry, to explore the subjectivity and inner worlds of the protagonists of this human drama and to contain its scandalous excess through narrative resolution. The article explores how both forms of media allowed for the articulation of regimes of public fantasy through melodrama, if in rather different ways.

Networks, Labour and Migration Among Indian Muslim Artisans

“…Chāl-chalan encompasses several meanings and has been variously translated as referring to one's behaviour (Ramnarain 2015), public persona (Gadihoke 2011), mode of moving about (Jeffrey 2010), embodied norms (Pigg 1995) and one's demeanour reflected in speech, dress and mien (Jeffery et al 2005). In the second chapter of her monograph Mahmood describes the diversity of women who attended religious seminaries at various mosques across the city.…”

Ghar Mein Kām Hai (There is Work in the House)

“…Others articulated their worries about being coopted into domestic labour within the broader category of chāl-chalan. The term encompasses several meanings and has been variously translated as referring to one's behaviour (Ramnarain, 2015), public persona (Gadihoke, 2011), mode of moving about (Jeffrey, 2010), embodied norms (Pigg, 1995) and/or one's demeanour (P. reflected in speech, dress and mien (C. . Purdah practice is an element in all these, but it was not only the move from a relatively public space (the factory) to the private space of another family that fundamentally shaped women's concerns and reflected negatively on their chāl-chalan.…”