Outraged by this well-toned Ganesh, many went about complaining how such a depiction of the Great Roly-Polyglot was emblematic of the aggression and belligerence that New India/New Hindu India extols. As if having a hot bod a la Brad Pitt in Fight Club is synonymous with wanting to pick a fight.
Some, including card-carrying, curd-eating atheists, even quoted the Mudgala Purana – where the deity is described in his Lambodara (Potbellied) and Mahodara (Great Bellied) forms — to underline the travesty. For them, this was a gross misrepresentation that smacked of reverse body-shaming.
I’m kinda open to wide interpretations, even when it goes charging against the narrative grain. For me, AK Ramanujan‘s seminal 1987 essay, ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’ – demonstrating how the story of Rama has undergone numerous variations while being transmitted across languages, societies, regions, historical periods and religions, coexisting in various, even conflicting narratives – cuts both ways. You can’t say ‘Bravo!’ to Joel Coen’s film production of The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington in the title role – Shakespeare may not have quite seen a Black man play his 11th c. Scotsman – and then have issues with a Ganesh for being superfit.
Ganesh having a fine set of abs is as valid as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock being a gee-whiz on his smartphone in Victoria’s Secret England, instead of Conan Doyle’s original Holmes in pre-internet Victorian London. The same goes with ‘Angry Hanuman’, the riveting reinterpretation of Dara Singh’s interpretation of the Pavanputra – created in 2015 by the ‘Raja Ravi Verma-inspired’ Kerala graphic designer Karan Acharya – that we see Schwarzeneggering back at us from every third car rear windshield.
Speaking of Arnie ‘I’ll buy back’ Schwarz, the current male fetish for a six-pack really started blooming in the 1980s-90s. There were two types of Western male ‘perfect’ bodies – the buff, biceps-bulging Schwarzenegger type; and the ripped-Rambo, lean, mean, commie-fighting machine Sylvester Stallone type. As an onlooker who has kept his rectus abdominis muscle under the radar, I always plonked for the Sly Stallone look. But the pop cultural desire to have a washboard stomach goes a bit further back. French historian Georges Vigarello, in his 2010 book, The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity, points to how the corpulent male figure was valued, even prized, in Western societies in the 16th-18th centuries. The ‘large’ Ganeshesque male body was a sign of prosperity and success, endowed with what we now call a ‘power paunch’. England’s Henry VIII was the Hrithik pin-up on many a Tudor- teen’s wall. Things changed when the West rediscovered Ancient Greece visually. The Elgin Marbles – 5th c. BC Greek sculptures stolen by the Brits in the 19th c, many of which show male figures sporting lean and muscular physiques – were put on public display in London from the 1800s. At the Great Exhibition at Hyde Park in 1851, with its exhibition halls ‘decorated’ with Grecian statues, those ripped abs became the next franchise must-haves.
The look became associated with valour, strength and whatever Industrial Revolution-era dudes (and dudesses) suddenly thought to be cool. Thanks to the 19th c. version of celebrity Insta posts – Grecian statues and huge body-building celebs like Eugen Sandow doing Taylor Swift-like world tours, including in India in 1904-05 – the six-pack was developing nice and tight.
Today, it’s no longer about (just) being aggro like those proto-Rambo fighters depicted in those British Museum statues. It’s about prosperity and success – but, this time around, via physical fitness not fiscal fat. Women, too, are ditching the male-engineered ‘ideal’ Gajagamini look for the athletic six-pack abs.
Gods are made in the image of men. And men are made in the image of celebs. So, if a half-horse, half-man from Greek mythology can have ripped abs, why can’t Ganapati match SRK in Pathaan pack to pack? Meanwhile, mere mortal me will stick to my Sunday six-pack. Of beer.