All images by Ayesha Broacha.
Apparently the spotlight on Indian authors wasn't just a transient fad that escalated when The God of Small Things was deemed Booker Prize worthy in 1999, followed by Jhumpa Lahiri's turn to collect the Pulitzer for The Interpreter of Maladies the year after. There's so much hullabaloo for the penmen and women churning out prose and poetry out of post-colonial India.
Shove all that hype under the Persian carpet with a stiletto 'cause one woman outsells all the laureates put together; Ms Shobhaa De.
De,56, easily India's most recognisable and glamourous columnists, is as much a newsmaker as she is, in her own words, "a chronicler of our times." Not too long ago, India Today, after years of scathing reviews and unflattering portraits, deemed her one of the 50 Most Influential People in a nation of one billion. Tongue in chic, she raises her perfect eyebrows when a complimentary review was published in the weekly, days after her latest (her 14th) book hit the stands, "I must be doing something wrong."
Thoroughly amused, if not bemused, by the acerbic reviews, she remains firmly unapologetic of her work, her words, and herself. Her latest book, Spouse, The Truth about Marriage sold out its first print in 48 hours of release in New Delhi and the second edition recently reached our smog-filled shores. "Someone collected the worst reviews published ever and I think I had the most - around 315 of them from Asia alone," laughs De. "But it didn't stop me. I write because it keeps me sane, because I want to write, I need to write. I write for me, not anyone else."
The media at large slapped her with a label; the "Jackie Collins of Mumbai" - words that make her flinch even a decade after the article appeared in print. She reveals, "I've never met Jackie Collins but the comparison irritates me because I find it so completely absurd and irrelevant. It was just a lazy description by an American correspondent writing my profile in TIME magazine to make me accessible to an international readership because at the time, my first book was out and instead of just saying this person from India has written this book, he just thought it would be easier to say she's the Jackie Collins of Asia. It was the correspondent being cute and it's an albatross around my neck."
Her neck is currently swathed in a shimmering, sequined scarf and she sits on a table at a coffee shop, surrounded by samples from her shopping spree. Chairs brought in for the interview are regally ignored while a photographer clicks away for a local paper. She strikes confident poses - remnants from an early tryst with a short-lived, self-aborted modeling career. If her sharp profile is an asset, her sharper mind is a fusillade, carefully hidden under coiffed auburn curls.
Bollywood would have been the next inevitable step for this top model in Mumbai in the 1970's, but instead of appearing onscreen - despite offers from Oscar-winning auteur Satyajit Ray - she became the editor of the now-iconic Indian film rag, Stardust.
Yes, as cheesy as it sounds, it was indeed a journal of what the fine feathered folks in the Indian celebrity circuit were up to. Fan-zines litter the Indian market but she chose to wipe the halo away from the screen demi-Gods (let's not forget India is a country that erects temples for their favourite actors) and wrote defiant editorials - a trend hitherto unchanged.
She found fame early but found the famous, boring, "Some movie stars are big babies but that's their problem. I have my job, they can do their's," she waves her diamond festooned hand about, shooting away imaginary flies, "I think Indian celebrities [not unlike Hollywood!] are too accustomed to puff pieces and a level of sycophancy that I find sickening. There are people who are constantly feeding that ego. I couldn't do that."
She does refrain from commenting on newcomers that hoard Bollywood, the Indian film capital. No potshots at the upcoming youngsters or star-children who she feels need time to grow into their boots. Perhaps it's that maternal instinct kicking in, after all she's a mother of six aged between 16-32!
She does however, bring down the titans of Asia.
India's most popular actor Shahrukh Khan reacted very badly to a recent column penned by De. Brought to court to speak out against the Indian mafia, he turned into a hostile witness and retracted his statements made to the police. De called him a coward point blank.
The most powerful man and Bollywood icon a coward?
The PR machinery spun out of control. The King of Bollywood, whose Pepsi posters are visible in every nook and cranny in Mumbai, vehemently spoke out against her, "I could have got pissed off when I read Shobhaa De's article in which she called me unmanly.I told her I was disappointed in her. And I never do that for articles. I could have got really angry. There's a saying, let the dogs bark, the elephant's will go on. When you don't know the facts, you don't open your mouth, because the facts can scare the pants off you. And I told Shobhaa De so. She doesn't know what she's talking about."
Oh but she does.
Despite insisting there is no plan to keep herself in the news, Ms De has done nothing to hop out of it either.
"I don't live my life to outrage India. I'm not there to shock anybody. I say what I
believe is the right thing to say, to state if it ends up breaking the rules, then the rules get broken but it's not by design. It is not a strategy."
Then why say the biggest star in India has "no balls"?
"I never said that. I don't use that kind of language,"she says curtly. "I may have called Shahrukh a coward along with the other stars who went back on their word. But it wasn't me alone that said it. People respond very strongly to whatever I say. I'm flattered that seem only to react to what I say and ignore everything else."
Despite having left film journalism, being married to wealthy businessman Dilip De, the high-profile couple attend parties where running into a star she's written about might make the meeting awkward, I presume.
I stand corrected.
"It never gets awkward. Never ever. We're not children. Shahrukh called me up the day after the column and explained himself. I told him to speak to the press, why tell me?"
On actor Hrithik Roshan's wedding day, the national papers arrived at the doorstep of both his parents and his to-be-in-laws homes with reports of his affair with one of his co-stars.
The poster prince for good Indian values a pre-marital adulterer? A De exclusive. Fervent denials followed the same day from both parties and De was again demonised. Threats of lawsuits (long since quashed) followed. How could she say that he was "caught cootchie-cooing" with another actress when she wasn't in the picture?
"I stand by that completely. I found out that information from a very good source and an eye-witness and and it happened on a British Airways flight and I challenge Hrithik to deny it," states De.
He did deny it.
"Oh he can deny it. All stars deny anything that they find an unacceptable part of themselves but I can challenge him any time to the veracity of what happened on that flight, and that they were having a scene and they probably still are! But that's none of my business whether they are or not, but its just that I don't like hypocrisy and I don't like pretense."
But he's the golden boy of Bollywood...
"Was. Past tense. He's not anymore baby! At the time, he was projecting himself as this family guy, totally madly in love with his new wife. He may as well be, I'm not even doubting the depth of his love but whatever happened on that flight, happened on that flight. He cannot challenge that. He'd be stupid to."
Listed, with Sonia Gandhi, as one of the most prominent personalities in India, De tries - but not too hard - to let her displeasure be known. "What astonished me about the selection was the fact that there were only four women in it, in the seventh biggest democracy in the world, when you handpick 50 and out of which only four women seem to count, one of whom happens to be a political leader by default, that to me is a little depressing."
Having polished her talons and perfected the conversational approach to her column, with splatters of 'honey', 'no baby' and other socialite catch-phrases, she's the one that notes that Sonia Gandhi was wearing Gucci shoes while being sworn in at Parliament in New Delhi.
"Will any other country on the planet have a foreigner as its leader?" she asks rhetorically.
In the husky yet clear-cut tone, her cadence picks up as she states, "I like the idea that women who find themselves on various lists for whatever reason as influence makers and as opinion makers, should do so on the strength of their own personal achievements, not because they are married to someone, not because they belong to a certain family and have things on a platter happening for them. That they should have risen to whatever position like Mayavati [a minister in India] has and shown courage, merit and should be inspirational figures in their own right which has nothing to do
with their social position and standing."
As we meander through topics, it comes to mind that there hasn't been much discussion on her novels. The work she does at her dining table at home, eight hours a day, three columns each week and a book every other year, while bringing up six kids.
"The moment I'm done with a column, I forget about it. When people come and ask me what I said at that time, on that day, I go blank. I've moved on. They haven't."
The novels well behind her, she's the woman behind one of India's most popular soaps on television too. De's repeated appearances in the social pages, in addition to her national columns, headed with glamourous photo bylines, indicate a workaholic who's moved bag and baggage to an office. On the contrary, she rarely leaves home.
"Anything that's going to take me away from my kids is unacceptable. I don't like
the idea of latch-key kids, letting themselves in, fixing themselves a snack, doing their homework in isolation, waiting for mom and dad to get back. It's something I find abhorrent," she says. "I feel very sorry for kids who do it all by themselves when their parents are out. I am a hands-on mom and I will not compromise that, no matter how lucrative and how wonderful a contract may be."
She wrote and conceived the eight-women led soap Kittie Party and its tremendous success has led to her latest venture, a political drama titled Swaarth (Self) with a cast of India's top television stars. Having shot the pilot recently, it should air soon.
There are no literary prizes to boast of, and no major awards, but when an influential political magazine gives an honorary award of sorts by listing her among billionaire businessmen, ministers, priests and legendary artists, it must be a vindication... if not a jaw-dropping surprise.
The final word, as always, belongs to Ms De.
"I think it has a lot to do with establishing a track record of credibility and over 30 years, I think I have earned that position, because what I say through my column and my books has reinforced the image of someone who speaks up when she has to. There may be times when what I'm saying is not very palatable, but I've always exercised my right to say it, say it responsibly and to say it strongly,"says Ms De, trying to fathom why her sharpest critics eulogized her after three decades of verbal vitriol.
"So you always get people who don't agree with you. Dissent is very much part of
democracy and I'm completely OK with that, but once you attain a certain level of influence, to be able to sustain it for a decade or more needs a lot of hard work. It needs a great deal of genuine commitment to what you're doing and you must be able to stand up and be counted."
Apparently the spotlight on Indian authors wasn't just a transient fad that escalated when The God of Small Things was deemed Booker Prize worthy in 1999, followed by Jhumpa Lahiri's turn to collect the Pulitzer for The Interpreter of Maladies the year after. There's so much hullabaloo for the penmen and women churning out prose and poetry out of post-colonial India.
Shove all that hype under the Persian carpet with a stiletto 'cause one woman outsells all the laureates put together; Ms Shobhaa De.
De,56, easily India's most recognisable and glamourous columnists, is as much a newsmaker as she is, in her own words, "a chronicler of our times." Not too long ago, India Today, after years of scathing reviews and unflattering portraits, deemed her one of the 50 Most Influential People in a nation of one billion. Tongue in chic, she raises her perfect eyebrows when a complimentary review was published in the weekly, days after her latest (her 14th) book hit the stands, "I must be doing something wrong."
Thoroughly amused, if not bemused, by the acerbic reviews, she remains firmly unapologetic of her work, her words, and herself. Her latest book, Spouse, The Truth about Marriage sold out its first print in 48 hours of release in New Delhi and the second edition recently reached our smog-filled shores. "Someone collected the worst reviews published ever and I think I had the most - around 315 of them from Asia alone," laughs De. "But it didn't stop me. I write because it keeps me sane, because I want to write, I need to write. I write for me, not anyone else."
The media at large slapped her with a label; the "Jackie Collins of Mumbai" - words that make her flinch even a decade after the article appeared in print. She reveals, "I've never met Jackie Collins but the comparison irritates me because I find it so completely absurd and irrelevant. It was just a lazy description by an American correspondent writing my profile in TIME magazine to make me accessible to an international readership because at the time, my first book was out and instead of just saying this person from India has written this book, he just thought it would be easier to say she's the Jackie Collins of Asia. It was the correspondent being cute and it's an albatross around my neck."
Her neck is currently swathed in a shimmering, sequined scarf and she sits on a table at a coffee shop, surrounded by samples from her shopping spree. Chairs brought in for the interview are regally ignored while a photographer clicks away for a local paper. She strikes confident poses - remnants from an early tryst with a short-lived, self-aborted modeling career. If her sharp profile is an asset, her sharper mind is a fusillade, carefully hidden under coiffed auburn curls.
Bollywood would have been the next inevitable step for this top model in Mumbai in the 1970's, but instead of appearing onscreen - despite offers from Oscar-winning auteur Satyajit Ray - she became the editor of the now-iconic Indian film rag, Stardust.
Yes, as cheesy as it sounds, it was indeed a journal of what the fine feathered folks in the Indian celebrity circuit were up to. Fan-zines litter the Indian market but she chose to wipe the halo away from the screen demi-Gods (let's not forget India is a country that erects temples for their favourite actors) and wrote defiant editorials - a trend hitherto unchanged.
She found fame early but found the famous, boring, "Some movie stars are big babies but that's their problem. I have my job, they can do their's," she waves her diamond festooned hand about, shooting away imaginary flies, "I think Indian celebrities [not unlike Hollywood!] are too accustomed to puff pieces and a level of sycophancy that I find sickening. There are people who are constantly feeding that ego. I couldn't do that."
She does refrain from commenting on newcomers that hoard Bollywood, the Indian film capital. No potshots at the upcoming youngsters or star-children who she feels need time to grow into their boots. Perhaps it's that maternal instinct kicking in, after all she's a mother of six aged between 16-32!
She does however, bring down the titans of Asia.
India's most popular actor Shahrukh Khan reacted very badly to a recent column penned by De. Brought to court to speak out against the Indian mafia, he turned into a hostile witness and retracted his statements made to the police. De called him a coward point blank.
The most powerful man and Bollywood icon a coward?
The PR machinery spun out of control. The King of Bollywood, whose Pepsi posters are visible in every nook and cranny in Mumbai, vehemently spoke out against her, "I could have got pissed off when I read Shobhaa De's article in which she called me unmanly.I told her I was disappointed in her. And I never do that for articles. I could have got really angry. There's a saying, let the dogs bark, the elephant's will go on. When you don't know the facts, you don't open your mouth, because the facts can scare the pants off you. And I told Shobhaa De so. She doesn't know what she's talking about."
Oh but she does.
Despite insisting there is no plan to keep herself in the news, Ms De has done nothing to hop out of it either.
"I don't live my life to outrage India. I'm not there to shock anybody. I say what I
believe is the right thing to say, to state if it ends up breaking the rules, then the rules get broken but it's not by design. It is not a strategy."
Then why say the biggest star in India has "no balls"?
"I never said that. I don't use that kind of language,"she says curtly. "I may have called Shahrukh a coward along with the other stars who went back on their word. But it wasn't me alone that said it. People respond very strongly to whatever I say. I'm flattered that seem only to react to what I say and ignore everything else."
Despite having left film journalism, being married to wealthy businessman Dilip De, the high-profile couple attend parties where running into a star she's written about might make the meeting awkward, I presume.
I stand corrected.
"It never gets awkward. Never ever. We're not children. Shahrukh called me up the day after the column and explained himself. I told him to speak to the press, why tell me?"
On actor Hrithik Roshan's wedding day, the national papers arrived at the doorstep of both his parents and his to-be-in-laws homes with reports of his affair with one of his co-stars.
The poster prince for good Indian values a pre-marital adulterer? A De exclusive. Fervent denials followed the same day from both parties and De was again demonised. Threats of lawsuits (long since quashed) followed. How could she say that he was "caught cootchie-cooing" with another actress when she wasn't in the picture?
"I stand by that completely. I found out that information from a very good source and an eye-witness and and it happened on a British Airways flight and I challenge Hrithik to deny it," states De.
He did deny it.
"Oh he can deny it. All stars deny anything that they find an unacceptable part of themselves but I can challenge him any time to the veracity of what happened on that flight, and that they were having a scene and they probably still are! But that's none of my business whether they are or not, but its just that I don't like hypocrisy and I don't like pretense."
But he's the golden boy of Bollywood...
"Was. Past tense. He's not anymore baby! At the time, he was projecting himself as this family guy, totally madly in love with his new wife. He may as well be, I'm not even doubting the depth of his love but whatever happened on that flight, happened on that flight. He cannot challenge that. He'd be stupid to."
Listed, with Sonia Gandhi, as one of the most prominent personalities in India, De tries - but not too hard - to let her displeasure be known. "What astonished me about the selection was the fact that there were only four women in it, in the seventh biggest democracy in the world, when you handpick 50 and out of which only four women seem to count, one of whom happens to be a political leader by default, that to me is a little depressing."
Having polished her talons and perfected the conversational approach to her column, with splatters of 'honey', 'no baby' and other socialite catch-phrases, she's the one that notes that Sonia Gandhi was wearing Gucci shoes while being sworn in at Parliament in New Delhi.
"Will any other country on the planet have a foreigner as its leader?" she asks rhetorically.
In the husky yet clear-cut tone, her cadence picks up as she states, "I like the idea that women who find themselves on various lists for whatever reason as influence makers and as opinion makers, should do so on the strength of their own personal achievements, not because they are married to someone, not because they belong to a certain family and have things on a platter happening for them. That they should have risen to whatever position like Mayavati [a minister in India] has and shown courage, merit and should be inspirational figures in their own right which has nothing to do
with their social position and standing."
As we meander through topics, it comes to mind that there hasn't been much discussion on her novels. The work she does at her dining table at home, eight hours a day, three columns each week and a book every other year, while bringing up six kids.
"The moment I'm done with a column, I forget about it. When people come and ask me what I said at that time, on that day, I go blank. I've moved on. They haven't."
The novels well behind her, she's the woman behind one of India's most popular soaps on television too. De's repeated appearances in the social pages, in addition to her national columns, headed with glamourous photo bylines, indicate a workaholic who's moved bag and baggage to an office. On the contrary, she rarely leaves home.
"Anything that's going to take me away from my kids is unacceptable. I don't like
the idea of latch-key kids, letting themselves in, fixing themselves a snack, doing their homework in isolation, waiting for mom and dad to get back. It's something I find abhorrent," she says. "I feel very sorry for kids who do it all by themselves when their parents are out. I am a hands-on mom and I will not compromise that, no matter how lucrative and how wonderful a contract may be."
She wrote and conceived the eight-women led soap Kittie Party and its tremendous success has led to her latest venture, a political drama titled Swaarth (Self) with a cast of India's top television stars. Having shot the pilot recently, it should air soon.
There are no literary prizes to boast of, and no major awards, but when an influential political magazine gives an honorary award of sorts by listing her among billionaire businessmen, ministers, priests and legendary artists, it must be a vindication... if not a jaw-dropping surprise.
The final word, as always, belongs to Ms De.
"I think it has a lot to do with establishing a track record of credibility and over 30 years, I think I have earned that position, because what I say through my column and my books has reinforced the image of someone who speaks up when she has to. There may be times when what I'm saying is not very palatable, but I've always exercised my right to say it, say it responsibly and to say it strongly,"says Ms De, trying to fathom why her sharpest critics eulogized her after three decades of verbal vitriol.
"So you always get people who don't agree with you. Dissent is very much part of
democracy and I'm completely OK with that, but once you attain a certain level of influence, to be able to sustain it for a decade or more needs a lot of hard work. It needs a great deal of genuine commitment to what you're doing and you must be able to stand up and be counted."
Feedback from Shobhaa De:
ReplyDelete"i am lovin' it..... as the tag line goes!
You are very precious to me, Rama. It has to be a karmic connection. I feel so happy that you are sounding on top of the world!
Guess what?? I was at a function last week with Sridevi sitting two places away ( looking scrumptious!). I thought of you and how you might have swooned.
I shall mail u a couple of B'Day pics. Do I feel 60?? Hell, no!! I feel great. And if that's how 60 feels, who's complaining?? It is definitely the new 40!!
Big hug and kiss. I'm sooooo overwhelmed. Thank you. Bless you! de