Seventy . . .

by Shobhaa De

  I have enjoyed every book and every author published under the SDé Books imprint. With each new title, I have learnt something invaluable. We do a limited number of non-fiction titles a year. But I get to read several fascinating manuscripts. Sitting in the publisher’s chair after being an author has made me far more sensitive to other writers. There are lots of wonderful voices out there, and several hugely talented people waiting for that book contract that often transforms their lives and starts an exciting adventure. It gives me as big a thrill to hold the advance copy of ‘my’ author’s book as it does when my own arrives. Goosebumps and all.

  Today, I feel like I am ready to face just about anything. ‘Cut the crap’ has always been my attitude. It has served me well. ‘Cut to the chase’ is another. I have an overdeveloped sense of the ridiculous. And irreverence is a religious belief. I meet many pompous asses who take themselves far too seriously and declare without a trace of embarrassment, ‘I am an intellectual.’ Get over it, friend! No, you are not! You are just another smug person with a highly exaggerated sense of worth. Climb down from that high horse and look around you. What do you see? Far more talented people! Look at yourself now—what do you see if you are honest? A mediocre individual who has read a few books, watched a few films, attended a few concerts, and can brag about it. That’s all!

  ‘Cut the crap’ has always been my attitude. It has served me well. ‘Cut to the chase’ is another.

  I read an article with the headline ‘Men Write Erotica. Women Write Pornography.’ It was written by a woman whose books contain sexually explicit passages. Like a few of mine. I know what it feels like! People are obsessed with the sex lives of women. I still get asked that irritating question, ‘Madam . . . so much sex-vex in your books, na? Is it about your own experiences, hai na?’ I feel like yelling, ‘Yes, of course! Bilkul, ji! Aren’t I one hell of a lucky bitch?’ I mean, come on! Nobody asked Khushwant Singh that question! Then there are the young girls who come up to whisper, ‘I love your novels, yaar. You write amazing soft porn, ma’am! It’s too good! I was not allowed to read your books when I was in school. My mother used to hide them after wrapping the covers in brown paper. She wouldn’t let me touch them. So mean! Still . . . I managed somehow. You are too cool, ma’am . . . all those hot bits!’ Yeah . . . right . . . all those ‘hot bits’. Young men sidle up to say (heavy breathing at this point), ‘Madamji, aap toh India ki Lady Kamasutra ho! Can we click a selfie?’ I feel like saying, ‘Gadhey! Aur kuch nahi padha zindagi mein? Just the “hot bits”?’ But I figure, why waste my breath? I also feel like yelling, ‘Yes! Haan, haan! Yeh sab mere hi experiences hai. Bas, you dirty little fellow with the broken, stained teeth.’ Instead, I shrug. I smile a crooked smile. Next time, I am going to tell these kids to address me as ‘Your Royal Hotness’, just to see the expressions on their faces. Maybe they will squeal, ‘Sooooooo cute, yaar!’ Yup. I get that too. Or they’ll turn away, thinking, ‘What is this woman thinking?’

  Then come the ignorant foreigners who react with arched eyebrows and a sideways smile when I am introduced to them as a writer. ‘Oh really? So, dearie, what do you write? Romance? Cookbooks?’ I reply with my straightest face, ‘I write hardcore pornography disguised as cookbooks. Devouring orgasmic food is the ultimate pornographic experience, don’t you agree?’ Some of them get the joke. Others look startled, stare at my ‘native costume’ (saree) and move away swiftly.

  Nanga–bhooka India

  I am not one of Midnight’s Children. Rather, I am a Child of the Republic (1948). Technically, I was born into a ‘nanga–bhooka’ India. Except India never looked nanga–bhooka to me. India always looked beautiful. Still does. I don’t care if I am accused of over-romanticizing India. I can deal with that. What bugs me is the other idiotic charge, ‘Madamji, you are so elite! What do you know about the “other” India? How the majority lives?’ True to an extent. And not true, as well. Do you have to be the man on the moon to figure out a lunar eclipse? And yet, India’s image in the world continues to be defined by a begging bowl. Not too long ago, my husband and I were on a cruise along the many stunningly beautiful islands of Croatia. There were around thirty other people on board the midsized yacht. All of them were affluent and educated, and from different parts of the world. Nobody was interested in India. Nobody had heard of Narendra Modi. Even those smug Americans and Canadians on board weren’t aware that India was, in fact, the world’s largest democracy! Nobody knew India is considered one of the fastest-emerging global superpowers. Everybody was aware of China and its place in the international pecking order. I could read a few of their thoughts: How come these two have the money to take such a cruise? They did say they are from India—right? Isn’t there a famine going on there?’ Just like my generation associated the word ‘famine’ with Ethiopia. Same ignorance. Same prejudice. My husband was offended and outraged and delivered thundering lectures at the breakfast table, complete with statistics and published reports on the Great India Story. He was disturbed by their indifference. He wanted to change their perspective and set the record straight by bombarding them with information. No wonder they started avoiding us!

  Yes, it hurts. It hurts deeply when foreigners continue to think of India as the land of snake charmers, sadhus, elephants and tigers.

  Today, they add with a wink and a horrible snigger, ‘Oh yes, we heard about that terrible rape in a moving bus [Nirbhaya]! Women are treated very badly in your country. Rape capital of the world, eh?’ The English are happy to discuss cricket and Sachin Tendulkar before adding, ‘But the Pakistanis are bloody good . . . perhaps better!’ Most goras have never heard of Bollywood, even though more than 1500 movies are made here annually. Indian cuisine is reduced to: ‘Spicy! Yes, we have sampled your curries!’ Which bloody curry, you idiots? There is no such thing as a generic Indian ‘curry’! They have no idea about India’s IT whizzes, even those heading prominent American corporate giants, they haven’t heard of the number of billionaires who make it to the top of global rich lists. Ask about our Davos-walla industrialists and you get blank stares. People know next to nothing about this gigantic land mass with more than 1.4 billion people! They look dumbstruck when one discusses India’s position at the high table—there is disbelief when they learn India is a part of the G20. All they know or wish to talk about is our starving masses. Not even our staggering corruption! I thought the stratospheric numbers involved in cases of corruption, plus some of the prominent personalities, would make an ‘impact’. I was that desperate! I still wonder: How can such a vast seventy-year-old nation, a country as diverse, as culturally inspiring as India, leave the rest of the world this cold? And here we were, my husband and I, discussing the cultural and political contours of every country on the map, with casual acquaintances we weren’t likely to meet again. We knew more about their history than they knew about India’s present.

  That cruise became an eye-opener of sorts. To our co-passengers we must have looked like aliens from another galaxy. Brown people. One or two of them were foolish enough to state incredulously, ‘But you speak English! And you don’t look Indian.’ What did that even mean? That we were not representative enough of the nanga–bhooka India? We didn’t look poverty-stricken? We drank wine and used knives and forks? I was asked the standard stupid questions: ‘Was yours an arranged marriage?’ To which I would answer with a straight face, ‘Not just arranged by an evil uncle . . . it was also a child marriage.’ Most didn’t get the irony of that comment. I was also asked if I was South American, since my looks were not ‘Indian’ enough. I asked them to describe what they meant by ‘typical Indian looks’. And they would talk vaguely about a National Geographic documentary they’d once seen, in which ‘dark-skinned women wore brightly coloured garments and covered their faces with a veil’. Over and over again, the conversation kept coming back to poverty. No amount of kiddish ‘boasting’ about our burgeoning middle class with enough spending power to keep Croatia afloat, no amount of talking about our sat
ellites and space programmes, or India’s nuclear capability, could distract them from the nanga–bhooka narrative. Did they not have poor people in their own countries? And rape and violence and disease? I didn’t like the feeling of having to ‘explain’ India. Why are we made to behave in such an apologetic, defensive way, when we should be able to thrust our chests out with pride? Not all our men can boast of having a fifty-six-inch chest like Narendra Modi. But, come on . . . I sincerely think we are pretty terrific! I like the brashness of India. Yes, there are huge issues. But somehow, when we are celebrating any one of our outrageously colourful festivals, India appears perfect in the glow of all those diyas. My heart soars along with the cheeky kites during Sankranti. Or as I giddily swirl with the garba raas dancers and imagine I am Deepika Padukone singing, ‘Dhol baaje . . .’ I don’t enjoy playing Holi, but when I see the expression in the eyes of revellers smeared with myriad colours, it makes me happy.

  Right now, I am stuck! Happy to admit my dilemma. I love my India. I loathe the politicians in control of our collective destiny. Unless there is some dramatic and unforeseen development, I believe the BJP will be the main party dominating the political scenario for the next twenty years. I have uneasily made my peace with that forecast. There is little choice. Though Rahul Gandhi’s Berkeley address may turn the tide for the Congress party. Day by day, I watch with a growing sense of alarm, dread and concern as various freedoms are trampled and critical voices get silenced. Making the singing of Vande Mataram compulsory in schools? Tick. Monitoring social media accounts and actively spying on citizens? Tick. Rewriting history books and wiping out any positive reference to Mughal history? Tick. Appointing RSS-approved personalities to some of the most coveted administrative/ceremonial positions? Tick. Jailing, hounding, prosecuting and persecuting dissidents and free thinkers? Tick. The state is creeping up on citizens in obvious and insidious ways. We are told it is being done ‘for our good’. Inch by inch, we are surrendering priceless personal ground, precious territory. The next generation may not even know the existence of our fundamental rights. The process to infiltrate and indoctrinate every aspect of our lives has started. India being declared a Hindu nation seems a certainty. Which automatically means Muslims beware—behave or else.

  Today, we are being dictated to at multiple levels—told what we can eat, drink, watch, wear, think. The protests against these diktats have been feeble at best. Hamid Ansari, a soft-spoken, erudite scholar, spoke for many when he stated on television, soon after his term as the vice president of India ended, ‘This propensity to be asked to assert your nationalism day in and day out is unnecessary. I am an Indian and that is that.’ That really should be that. But is it? Ansari candidly referred to a sense of unease among Muslims, and he said ‘a sense of insecurity is creeping in’—can anybody deny this? His stinging critique must have upset the prime minister enough to rebuke Ansari publicly in words one can only describe as unfortunate and undignified (‘You can now follow your basic ideology and instinct . . .’).

  Despite all these dreadful and discouraging signs, my faith in the Constitution and in the basic decency, even goodness, of our people never deserts me. Indians possess enormous reserves of common sense that has saved them over centuries. It will save them again, even if the present regime ups its game. It may take a generation to set things right. A huge price may be extracted. Even so, I don’t feel discouraged or defeated about India’s future. Along with the dream of greater prosperity and more jobs, there are other equally compelling dreams. Dreams of equality and safety. Dreams of free speech and the right to dissent. Dreams of privacy and progress. Why should any citizen back down in the face of dadagiri? Take on the bullies! Protest with all your might. A free India is the only India. Fight and reclaim what is rightfully yours—it is our Bharat mahaan. Yours and mine. It belongs to us. Remember, we have not handed it over like a yummy chocolate cake to any political party, at any time in our history. The BJP has the people’s overwhelming mandate for now. And that mandate must be respected as long as the BJP serves the people. It is our job as citizens to make sure they deliver as promised. I am not an economist, I don’t understand GST and demonetization—but nor do 99 per cent of Indians. Like them, all I know is I am paying more and more and getting less and less for working harder and harder. Makes no sense to me. If I am feeling conned and angry, so are millions of others.

  Yet, we cling on desperately to the few and far between lollipops we receive—mainly from our judiciary, which seems to have taken over the running of the country, simply because there is nobody else willing to do a good and honourable job of it. To those men and women, who protect the Constitution and provide hope to millions of citizens—a big salaam. The landmark judgement which was hailed by all gave privacy back to us as a fundamental right. In an atmosphere defined by fear and repression—this was a major victory signalling an era of justice and equality in the years ahead. This vital ruling enshrined the right of every citizen to ‘dissent and critique’. Nothing beats this!

  Yet, we cling on desperately to the few and far between lollipops we receive—mainly from our judiciary, which seems to have taken over the running of the country, simply because there is nobody else willing to do a good and honourable job of it.

  The past four years have added new words to our everyday vocabulary that make me uncomfortable. We have gone smoothly from Donald Trump’s ‘post-truth’ to our very own ‘post-guilt’. These are phrases that generate pain and unease of an unfamiliar kind. I voice my anguish. As do thousands of others. The rather foolish response to any of our concerns is: ‘Go to Pakistan.’ The first time this happened, I wrote a column which ended with the line, ‘My bags are packed. I am ready to go to Pakistan.’ Agreed it was an impulsive outburst, and I really don’t want to go to Pakistan. Or live in any other country. But this silly refrain—‘Go to Pakistan’—has not stopped. The level of public discourse is shamefully low. Name-calling is not a cogent argument. I ignore abuse. But what about all the writers across India who have been physically targeted? Abducted? Murdered? Yes . . . things have changed. The slide has been dramatic and too sudden. We no longer react with horror and shame—as we should—to casteist slurs, for example. Words like divisive, Dalit, lynchings, gau rakshaks, rape, ghar wapsi, to name just a few, are so liberally strewn in the media, they no longer generate a response—no shock, no outrage, no anger. The present regime believes we have been successfully inoculated into accepting the restructuring of India along dangerous and narrow religious lines. No, we have not. Like dengue, there is no inoculation in the world that can succeed here. Speak up—and be damned. Keep mum—and also be damned! So what? Speak up, you must. India is yours. Fight for it!

  While I was driving through a surprisingly green and lush part of Rajasthan with Arundhati, she drew my attention to young boys playing cricket in the clearing near a village. There were at least ten teams playing side by side. Some of the boys wore only tattered shorts. Nobody was wearing shoes. From these very fields, so many of our most talented cricketers have played for India and brought glory to the country. Maybe I am consoling myself. Maybe I don’t want to face grim realities. That’s my call. It’s like a child looking trustingly at the mother who is less than perfect. Does the child notice her flaws? I think not. My emotional relationship with India is something similar. I feel protective when India is criticized by people who are not stakeholders. I am a stakeholder. I have earned the right to feel possessive. And the right to criticize. For nothing in the world will I walk away from the land of my birth. The land of my forefathers. India is my DNA. Nanga or clothed. Bhooka or well fed. Boss—yeh mera India, okay? Jaisey bhi! Kaisa bhi! Don’t mess hamarey saath—mind it!

  Mere apne

  My kids drive me nuts. I am sure I drive them nuts. Perhaps they can imagine a life without me. I dare not ask—what if they cheerfully chorus, ‘Yes! We can!’ But I certainly cannot endure a day without them. Modern-day mothering is something else. I shudder when I hear about
the countless daily challenges faced by parents today. And how ironical it is that someone like me has to be constantly tutored on what is ‘cool’ and what isn’t. There are life-threatening situations out there that nobody prepared my generation for. I remain cautiously optimistic about the future and blow kisses heavenwards that so far I have not had to deal with a) a child getting arrested for something trivial/not so trivial, b) a drug bust, c) OD-ing, d) run-ins with the law, e) drunken driving, f) gang wars or f) public or private brawls. If, in reality, their lives have in fact been far wilder or more colourful than I am aware of, and they haven’t got into a serious mess, well then, good for them. I don’t necessarily want to know anything or everything in an overwrought, paranoid mommy way. I think I know as much as I need to know. And that’s already too much!

  We are in constant touch no matter where we may be, in India or overseas. WhatsApp has been one of the greatest tech boons in my life for this sole reason. I can chat non-stop on our group, aptly called The Brood. If my incessant chatter bugs them, they haven’t said so. I know how obsessively I keep checking for messages from them. I joke I can read not just their hearts, but their kidneys and gall bladders too. Today, three of them, Radhika, Avantikka and Arundhati, have children of their own. I see them as exemplary mothers—hands-on and well informed. They have their priorities in place. And are married to caring, loving partners. The other three? Vagabonds! Lovable vagabonds. They will decide when they decide, and I will accept their choices unconditionally. They know as much. Rana and Aditya—the ‘boys’ are men now. Rana is in his own Zen-like zone in Singapore. Aditya likes his cave equally. The ladies love both of them. As for Anandita—she is the ‘baby’ we hope will stay our baby for ever, even after she has her own. Their dissimilarities intrigue me. Sometimes, I step back and watch us when we are together and ask myself in wonder, ‘Did I really have something deep and wonderful to do with all of them that goes beyond biology?’ When I shut my eyes, just after switching off the lights at night, I first say a small prayer expressing gratitude for one more fulfilling/maddening day on earth. I remember my mother . . . and imagine she has just stroked my forehead . . . held me. Then I smile. That smile is only for my children. They never see it. I wish they could. For they will see a contented, peaceful mother . . . not smug, not uncritical, not all-forgiving . . . oh no! But a woman who cherishes their presence with every breath she takes. If this narrative does not have enough mentions, memories and anecdotes about each one of them individually, it is because I find it the toughest writing assignment of all! Children are competitive. They count words and lines. They note omissions and commissions. It is impossible to please your own. I was touched when Arundhati asked for her ‘birthday letter’ this year. It used to be a tradition for me to write these letters to the birthday child . . . and I am not sure when or even why I stopped. Perhaps I thought my over-sentimental words no longer interested my children. And that was hurtful. The only reaction I’d get was, ‘Ma . . . you have made me cry again!’ Was that praise? Or an accusation? I wasn’t sure. I did not ask. And then Arundhati made her request . . . my heart soared! After writing the letter, I searched for words that captured my emotions adequately. I was at a loss. Suddenly, the miracle happened. I found them! Those two little words: ‘Mere apne’, so evocatively put together by our great poet Gulzar, express my feelings towards my babies better than any tome. The words are all embracing and complete. My children are my entire universe and beyond—they are my precious ‘mere apne’. And I love making them cry! Because that gives me an excuse to cry too!