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The return of the romantic hero
Kishwar Desai

INDIAN audiences and, indeed, the Indian film industry, have been thrown into confusion by the arrival of one actor from across the border, Fawad Khan. Will we Indians now have to redefine, if not our borders, then at least our current concept of male beauty, thanks to Fawad's non-muscular physique and all-natural good looks? As thousands of screaming women fans will testify, Fawad Khan through the film "Khubsoorat" is giving a serious challenge to our Bollywood hunks, emphasising the return of the romantic hero. And this time it is clearly the women who are taking the lead in deciding whom they consider charismatic and beautiful'.

Pakistan actor Fawad Khan is now quite the rage in India too.

The startling impact of yet another (though very different) Khan makes one wonder why women in India had for the past few decades abdicated their responsibility to decide what are the attributes of male sumptuousness? Why had we allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of beauty customisation'? Our irregularities and warts are what make us stand out, and the concept of what is eye candy' for women can never have a one-size-fits-all formula. Apart from that, one wonders whether we, as Indian women, are really attracted to aggressive, macho men? And yet it was the Akshay Kumars and Salman Khans who, with their boringly rippling muscles, had dominated the popular imagination for the past few decades.

While Miss Universe and Miss World competitions currently set the standards' for women, men have contests where they are usually ranked according to their sculpted bodies. While women need that hourglass figure as well as a gorgeous face, the competitions for men are quite content to focus on their muscular attributes. It is the Greek notion of male beauty celebrated in Michelangelo's David (incidentally, it does have six pack' abs!) that had begun to dominate the Indian imagination. Or was it just a secret conspiracy by gym equipment manufacturers?

It's a body image quite contrary to our own ancient sculptures and paintings (of which we have a long tradition) in which women are decidedly voluptuously endowed (though narrow waisted) but it is the men who are rather skinny and decidedly non-muscular. In fact, I would go so far as to say that our epitome of attractive men, taken largely from mythology, had earlier been based on the sylph like figures of Ram or Krishna. Perhaps these notions were set in the past few centuries by the great artist, Raja Ravi Verma, but even in the earlier schools no sculpture and painting demonstrated an obsession with muscular physiques. Our heroes always tended to be rather slim, and with slightly feminine looks.

Are we, in a post-Fawad world, ready to reset our measure for male attractiveness?

Driven by testosterone, men obviously still think that only men should judge what should be appreciated in other men. Thus instead of reading books, or reciting poetry to us, they spend all their time in sweaty gyms trying to design a body that they think we will be enraptured by. And right now we even have a childish competition between our male actors on the internet, where they are egging each other on to show their six or eight or 10-pack abdominal muscles. Don't they realise Indian women no longer want pure brawn?

Boys, we should tell them, can you stop sweating, and please calm down! Can we, women of India, tell you what we find delightful? Just look at this perfect specimen' that has appeared on the horizon!

And yes, he is the most khubsoorat' part of the eponymous film, with the heroine Sonam Kapoor paling into the background. Fawad Khan is suddenly India's heartthrob with millions of Indian women happily spending three hours in a dark auditorium in the arms of a screen hero who never sheds his clothes or even looks like he knows how to lift weights or use a treadmill. What a relief! When Sonam Kapoor admires his long eyelashes, or confesses to lusting after him (onscreen) she is probably echoing the words of Fawad fans, who see in him the return of the romantic' era, when women were called chaudvin ka chaand' and treated gently. The last we saw this phenomena was in the Seventies with the rise of another narrow-shouldered romantic hero, Rajesh Khanna.

And how refreshing was that! So while Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh appear to have reconstructed' their faces and bodies into perfectly toned and sculpted flesh, all artificial to the extreme, we have been struck by an au naturel Pakistani package. The irony, of course, is that it has taken an actor from Pakistan to remind us of the importance of love and romance! Physical boundaries might always exist, but Indian and Pakistani women have now found a new reason to bond.