“Voicing Aspiration” by Anaar Desai-Stephens
Excerpted from Voicing Aspiration: Bollywood Songs and Dreamwork in Contemporary India by Anaar Desai-Stephens; reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press. Envision a young woman in her mid-teens, so skinny and wide-eyed that she looks even younger, but right now filled with self-assurance as she stands in front of her bedroom mirror. It is midnight…