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Koffee With Karan: Bobby Deol’s Candid Reflections on Prolonged Adolescence Offer Valuable Insights for Men Beyond Their Youth

Deol fans have a long-running joke: “It took three generations to launch Bobby.” The second episode of the latest season of Koffee With Karan was unremarkable. Sunny and Bobby Deol, described as “legacy stars,” gushed about their recent successes after decades of setbacks and, in Bobby’s case, outright failure. They discussed family, their father, and Gadar 2. Except for Sunny’s dig at Shah Rukh Khan, it was all “hum saath saath hain” with less drama.

In a moment of honesty that seemed reminiscent of Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, Bobby confessed to giving up and drinking heavily after his career took a nosedive (insensitive jokers might say that’s all it ever did). Essentially, the younger Deol didn’t seem to realize for a long time that in the “industry,” people use each other, so you have to make yourself useful.

It may seem odd to many that it took a man to get to his 50s to realise that, unlike his family, no one really cares about his success and failures in the wider world. Even when that world is as incestuous as the Hindi film industry. But Bobby’s revelation eludes many Indians, and certainly Indian men of a certain class and privilege.

Sunny Deol’s hyper-nationalistic archetype of masculinity is one extreme, but its polar opposite is just as annoying. Too many young men, perhaps unknowingly, are becoming Devdas-like figures. Their entitlement, fostered by generations of being the apple of their conservative families’ eyes, expresses itself in self-pity at best and gaslighting of the people around them at worst. As a coming-of-age mistake, this may be understandable, if not excusable. But in the age of social media, when everyone thinks they’re the main character in a bad movie, this behavior tends to go on for far too long.

Ziya Khan

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