Seventy . . .

by Shobhaa De

  A couple of months later, I signed off on this crazy protection. And got my life back!

  We are still in touch, my ‘boys’ and I. They had become a part of our family, and a certain attachment developed over time. We knew which cop liked sugary, milky tea and which preferred strong coffee. We kept track of their fasting days and made sure we cooked upwaas food (sabudana khichdi or upma—no onions, no garlic, no masalas). When Arundhati got married, they were right there at all the ceremonies. One of them even chased a press photographer who had managed to sneak in through an unguarded entrance at the back of the venue, and politely asked him to delete all the pictures he had clicked surreptitiously (he didn’t!). They were there when we rushed to the hospital for Arundhati’s delivery, and they were there when I broke down and fought back tears at an emotionally charged event. Both were good men assigned to perform a duty they may or may not have enjoyed. I like to think their time with my family was one they will look back on with fondness. As for us, out of sheer habit, we leave the house expecting to be greeted cheerfully by one of the men!

  For me, being protected by cops was just another interesting experience. I still don’t know what exactly the threat perception was, nor do I want to find out. All I do know is that no less than four senior diplomats from Europe generously offered me ‘asylum’ in their countries. Perhaps they were in the know about something I wasn’t aware of. Remember, this was when writers, bloggers and rationalists were being cold-bloodedly murdered. I had appeared on countless panel discussions on television, talking about the alarming rise in intolerance, about ‘award wapsi’ and other troubling developments. I had stuck my neck out over and over again. And the political dummies were at it, doing what they do best—abusing and threatening.

  Some of us at that time were viciously targeted by trolls and politicians, and dubbed ‘presstitutes’, ‘sicularists’ and ‘libtards’. I recall responding with a couldn’t-care-less ‘proud to be a presstitute’ on Twitter, which led to more trolling. But it had to be said. Many things had to be said. Now I am wondering—what difference did it make? There is zero room left for any sort of logical discourse with those in authority. The state has appropriated total power. The state is everything. The state is bigger than anybody. The state can fix any citizen, any time. When I realized my phones were tapped (it is so clumsily done, I feel like interrupting and saying something provocative just to wake up the interceptors), I didn’t feel alarmed. Being monitored and eavesdropped on by Big Brother is now a part of life. I am told I am watched and followed as well. I must be doing something right! Watch and follow, snoop away. And if you do find something interesting, share it with me.

  I guess there are some individuals who attract trouble. I am one of them. People stupidly ask whether I consciously ‘court controversy’. What rubbish! Who does that? Perhaps a few desperadoes with a great deal of time on their hands and nothing to lose. I have no use for controversy. It’s expensive, pointless and pretty unaffordable in the long run. It serves no purpose and can be tedious and tiresome as hell. Is compliance the opposite of controversy? If so, then you could say I am anything but compliant and passive. ‘Complicit’ is a dirty word. ‘Complicit’ is worse than ‘compromised’. I remain my own person. Is that a crime these days? This can lead to situations that my children call ‘highly avoidable’. They admonish me far more than my husband. I guess it has to do with experience. ‘Mama—why can’t you stay shut for a change?’ they scold me if I speak out on an issue. ‘Is it going to make the slightest difference what you state? No! Just stay out of all this nonsense and mind your own business.’ Sensible advice. But who says I am sensible? Or that I even like sensible?

  The state has appropriated total power. The state is everything. The state is bigger than anybody. The state can fix any citizen, any time.

  I really don’t know who I am fooling when I vow to behave after I have annoyed my family greatly and been in the news for all the ‘wrong’ reasons. I tell myself to keep mum, lie low, not react, stop tweeting, get off social media, show more restraint. These resolutions don’t last for even a day. The thing is, our lives throw up so much rich material! How can we not respond to stimuli? What’s the point of being ‘in it’ and yet staying ‘out of it’, if you can’t or don’t participate? Soon, my grandchildren will be of an age when they can figure their naani is somewhat ‘off’. As in, odd. Different. They might compare me to the other naanis of their friends and shudder. Well, this is the naani they have and they’d better get used to her. I can’t change and have no desire to. I hope they can see beyond the oddities (‘a tattoo-wali naani—how funny!’), and accept their naani just the way she is. Like I accept them—those monster poppets capable of effortlessly breaking my heart.

  Living dangerously is a very attractive option.

  I feel like a complete fraud when strangers walk up to me to shake hands and declare admiringly, ‘Ma’am, you are so bold, so brave, so courageous.’ I swiftly correct them. I am nothing of the sort. If I am brave, so are we all. I have not faced bullets nor been in a seriously life-threatening situation so far. If I have not tested myself in those contexts, what is ‘brave’? Standing up to bullies? Of course I have done that and will continue to. My husband calls me an overgrown ‘teenage rebel’ and points out all the incidents from my past when as a schoolgirl, I rashly bucked the system and behaved with the sort of useless defiance that only silly little girls indulge in when they loathe discipline and their teachers. That sort of defiance achieves nothing in the long run. I lost out on a hell of a lot at school because I was impetuous and defiant. ‘It’s in your DNA,’ my husband says to make me feel less bad.

  My siblings were model students—high achievers who never disobeyed their teachers. Look at me. Getting into one mess after another—at seventy! My children think it’s daft. So do I. But I can’t help myself. Who would have imagined a tweet about a grossly overweight policeman would have stirred a national debate and led to so much trolling? It was a win–win situation for everyone but me. The cop received free treatment from a surgeon who made headlines. And a media-savvy nutritionist milked the moment to get hired as a consultant to the police force. When the story broke, and I was accused of ‘fat-shaming’ a poor cop who was suffering from stones in his gall bladder (as I found out later through his interviews), I was thousands of miles away in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. Everything seemed surreal and absurd as my phone kept ringing. It was minus 8 degrees, Reykjavik had experienced a record snowfall in four hours, and the city had come to a standstill, with mounds and mounds of snow burying cars, homes, bridges. Never had I seen such blinding whiteness. I wanted to take it all in. I knew we would never experience anything like this ever again. But calls from India kept interrupting my sense of wonder. And the subject was a cop from Madhya Pradesh who needed to lose weight drastically. I switched off my mobile phone. I hadn’t come to Iceland to give sound bites about a poor man who needed a fat-reduction procedure but didn’t have the money (after my tweet, he received generous funding, and subsequently thanked me publicly for saving him). I was there to live a dream. The one I had cherished since I was ten years old.

  The first time I read Heidi, I wanted to know what it felt like to be with a grandfather. Both of mine were dead by the time I was born. I envied Heidi and her life in the mountains, surrounded by goats, sheep, cows, horses, enjoying the sight of snow-covered peaks and spending time with a loving old man—her grandfather. The Northern Lights were mentioned in the book. And all I dreamt of back then was to see these wonderful lights some day. I became a little obsessed with the aurora borealis, and stayed obsessed.

  When the trip finally materialized, more than fifty years later, I couldn’t believe we would be standing awestruck on a low hill in a tiny village called Hella, mesmerized by the dazzling show of ever-changing lights in the northern sky. Neon green, yellow, orange, purple and pink—the patterns kept whirling dizzily overhead as we tried to imprint them on our minds forever. I
t was the most significant trip of my life and I remain grateful to my husband for making it happen. At one point I did feel afraid, uncharacteristically so. As we stepped out for our first sighting, I experienced a panic attack. I didn’t want to take one more step on that slippery ice. My fingers were numb with the cold. I was misjudging distances, feeling disoriented and sick. Even the sky didn’t tempt me to look up and gaze at what we had travelled so many miles to see. I kept repeating, ‘I don’t like it, I don’t like it, get me out of here. I don’t want to see anything.’ Around us, Japanese enthusiasts were aiming sophisticated cameras at the lights and capturing the celestial dance expertly. And there I was, refusing to look up at a long-cherished fantasy that had finally become a reality. What was wrong with me?

  I still don’t know what happened that night. Could have been the thin air, the biting cold, lack of acclimatization, dehydration. This behaviour was so odd for me, my husband was baffled. If he felt disappointed by my reaction, he didn’t say it. It was a mind-boggling spectacle and he was there to enjoy every microsecond. I am glad I overcame my fear the next night and the night after. We were most fortunate to see the lights on three consecutive occasions. This is pretty rare, as some of our fellow travellers told us. A few of them had been chasing the lights for years and from different locations. A couple had spent ten days in Norway and gone home without a single sighting. Others had had a glimpse or two but with very faint lights that disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. So I feel blessed many times over. I will forever look back on this special trip and thank Heidi and Dilip for making it happen in the most wondrous and loving way!

  Nearly a month later, I was still under a spell. I was literally seeing lights. But more than just the thrill of experiencing something as magical, I began searching for my own internal ‘lights’—the elusive ones that were as capricious as the Northern Lights. We all have our personal lights glowing away within. We forget to switch them on most of the time! Or worse, even when they are blazing away, we focus on the darkness surrounding them. Experts say all of us are ‘born’ with characteristics that define us for life. Like, saturnine creatures remain saturnine till they die. Or night owls stay night owls, while nightingales are the happy, rise-and-shine, blessed ones making the most of daylight hours. I have always preferred the night for everything I enjoy—write, eat, relax, read, travel, listen to music, watch movies. Um. Sex. Give me a late-night flight over a dawn one any day. Just the thought of waking up early induces serious stress, and I can’t fall asleep a week in advance just thinking about that damn flight!

  The trip to Iceland gave me time and opportunity to think in an environment stripped of the familiar. Travelling abroad was once the ultimate thrill for me as a young girl with severely limited resources. Even today, it’s that young girl whose eyes light up when a ‘foreign’ trip is scheduled. No matter how many times I have gone overseas, I still feel my heart pounding when I think of ‘abroad’—especially that special ‘abroad smell’. My children tell me the same thing. When we walk into a few destinations in India, we look at each other delightedly and trill, ‘Abroad smell.’ And what is this special smell? I’d say it’s the smell of all things posh. Of luxuries that were unaffordable, completely out of reach years ago, or experiences we thought were impossibly exotic. It is the smell of money and possibility.

  While I miss India’s special ‘smell’ terribly after a week spent at a foreign destination, I still look out for that heady mix of freshly ground coffee beans, the aroma of buttery croissants straight out of the oven, a seductive bouquet of divine perfumes and aftershave lotions—it’s a whole bunch of elements I find attractive. And I think, ‘Well, my grandchildren will grow up taking these very aromas for granted. Urban India smells like ‘abroad’ more and more. And that’s incredible! Confusing too. When I stroll into a glittering shopping mall in Mumbai these days, I could be anywhere in the world—it’s equally soulless and impersonal. But it also exudes a level of reassurance. We are not all that ‘poor’ any more, even though we actually are. We are amir log! We have money and cars and cheese and wine. My grandkids may not know the meaning of deprivation ever, or perhaps their idea of deprivation will have changed radically. Though I never ever felt ‘deprived’ even when there wasn’t any extra money to throw around on ‘non-essentials’. I grew up with the fixed idea of any form of waste being a sin. I still feel the same way about it. I recycle whatever can be recycled. I reuse and reuse. I don’t throw away what I call ‘perfectly good stuff’ even though it is about to fall apart.

  I grew up in a different India, a different social environment. Everybody knew everybody else! By name. Our worlds were that small. Neighbours walked in and out of one another’s homes without calling to check if it was okay. That was considered normal. People who chose to stay aloof were treated with suspicion (‘What are they hiding?’). The genuinely reticent ones were dubbed ‘eccentric’. The concept of being a loner by choice was alien (‘Why would anybody want to be alone?’). Today, I barely know my neighbours.

  There was a major fire in our high-rise residential complex recently. I was travelling, but two of my daughters were at home and fast asleep when the fire broke out in a flat right above our floor. They grabbed Gong Li, our Pekinese, and rushed down in their pyjamas . . . standing in the darkness, waiting for the fire brigade to arrive, they found several neighbours also in their nightclothes—more embarrassed about being ‘caught’ in such a dishevelled state by people they only met in the elevators than worried about the fire spreading to other floors! Women in nighties, stripped of their public faces (read: no make-up) and with their otherwise perfectly coiffed hair in a mess were miserable and awkward. Nobody spoke. Nobody hugged or reassured anybody else. The kids were busy taking selfies against the backdrop of the fire!

  How alarmingly impersonal our lives have become! Here’s another telling example: A plumber employed by the building society died suddenly after working in the complex for twenty-four long years. A kind office-bearer of the society decided to get members to contribute towards a fund for the man’s family. Here’s a person who had been visiting all our homes for over two decades, unclogging potties, fixing leaky taps, replacing showerheads. And yet, very few people could remember either the man’s name or his face! Residents asked quizzically, ‘Who died? The plumber? Which one was he? Short or tall?’ Blank! Most people were blank! The man had simply not registered on their mind’s screen! These people were not being arrogant or mean—they were just too preoccupied with their own lives to notice others who were not ‘important’ enough.

  Why do I tweet? Am I nuts?

  Nobody stays completely immune to criticism, even if the person claims indifference and detachment. Some people are hyper touchy. Others vindictive. I know friends who have waited for a decade or more to settle scores. I have zero energy to wage war. For the most part, I really couldn’t care less for what some disgruntled person has said or written. Take social media—sure, it’s a monster nobody can tame. Live with it at your own peril. It can devour and devastate anybody! In that sense it’s a very democratic monster, and I respect this monster a lot, even when I have been chewed to pieces. Trolls are ‘hidden people’. People in Iceland (the land of the original trolls) believe in these hidden people, like we in India believe in spirits and bhoot-pret. Trolls are an important part of Icelandic mythology. But for most of us who are visible on social media platforms, trolls are vicious, nameless people who stalk and target those who don’t agree with their views. That is too generous a description! I think trolls on Twitter are just people with no kaam dhanda other than to heap abuse on strangers. The only reason I am not affected by trolls is because I never read nor respond to comments on my tweets. I say what I have to say, and that’s where it ends. People are surprised when I tell them this. But I have found my attitude to be the least wasteful, most energy-saving way of hanging on to one’s sanity. Of course, it’s a nasty world out there! If you have a thin skin, don’t get into the spa
ce. If you are already in the space and find it hard to stomach the daily abuse, jump out! Nobody will miss you! That’s the fun of social media. Attention spans are ridiculously short and today’s social media star can be taken apart and thrown into the dustbin within seconds. You are as relevant as your last tweet.

  Why do I tweet?

  Because I am an idiot! God knows why people follow me . . .

  I enjoy tweeting. And I am not an immature, attention-seeking idiot tweeting recklessly about anything and everything. I know perfectly well what I want to say in 140 characters. If people find that fun, that’s great. If not, so what? The reactions to my tweets are interesting. A charming compère at an award show introduced me by saying, ‘One tweet from you shakes up Parliament!’ I scratched my head and thought, ‘Really?’ That’s not why I tweet, though. I want to shake myself up, first! How can one not react to the political and social environment? I have never been a passive bystander to life’s moving circus. If what I tweet does cause reverberations, I figure I must be doing something right! My husband says I get a childish kick out of being provocative. Conversely, what I see as ‘normal’ is deemed provocative by others with a more conservative outlook. I find the idea of disruption very attractive. No wonder I like Arvind Kejriwal—India’s Great Disrupter. It was always this way. Twitter suits this side of my personality perfectly. If a price has to be paid for outspokenness at a time when most lips are sealed, I am happy to stand up and be counted.