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The truth about De
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"My public image does not preoccupy me. It's a non-issue," says writer Shobhaa De in an interview to MEERA MOHANTY
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A WAY WITH WORDS Shobhaa De PHOTO: K. V. SRINIVASAN
What's it like being Shobhaa De? Is she the super sarcastic columnist, the one who shreds her own tribe to pieces? Is she really that generous woman who has brought together six children, hers, his and theirs, into one family? Or is she the crowned `empress of sex now turned matriarch of monogamy?' as Geeta Doctor wondered at a recent book reading of `Spouse'.
Or is she really just plain shy?
Shobhaa De insists she is. "My husband sent me this beautiful message, and all I've managed to reply was `nice message'," says the author with just that hint of a blush on her famous cheekbones.
There's one thing that we've no doubt about, whatever she may be, De is beautiful and extremely gracious. Apologising for being late, offering us tea and politely answering rude questions like `What's it like being Shobhaa De?'
Committed to her cause
"I have one head, two hands and two feet... I don't stop to think of it at all," she says. "I just do what I love doing with all the commitment I have. My public image does not preoccupy me, it's a non-issue."
The author agrees that there will be some curiosity about her, but no book sells purely on the strength of its author she argues. Not even if it's Shobhaa De.
"When I first started out, Penguin had exactly 10 titles, today they do 400 titles a year. Vikram Seth's last book didn't do that well, Upamanyu Chatterjee's flopped, today even Grisham doesn't sell like he did. People are not stupid, and won't buy a book because there's Shobhaa De on the cover."
The author claims she has had an incredible response to `Spouse' and email from people of different cultures, not just Indian. The book will be translated into five languages.
The book is all about marriage, the good and the bad. It's a subject she feels passionately about.
"Like people watch birds, I watch marriages," she says. Hers, if the book is anything to go by, is a very happy one; it has its moments but the C word keeps it going (C for commitment). And she has a very romantic husband.
Although De declares early on that it isn't a self-help book and she won't offer `dos and don'ts or marriage mantras', that's what the book does.
In fact, every chapter ends in bullet points — actually corny double hearts. It's marriage mush.
I am not so young and still not married. The virtues of marriage, I hear enough of. So I decide to fight back on behalf of all of us who have chosen ... or not chosen marriage yet. It includes De's own children. "I have six children and five of them are of marriageable age and no one seems inclined to get married. This generation is commitment phobic and I don't understand why," says De.
Still optimistic
I bring up ostentatious marriages, dowry, freedom...
"Indians are a marriage-obsessed society; it's centuries of conditioning. Dowry is the bane of our society. But how can any educated young man not feel ashamed to sell himself as a commodity? But there are so many women from smaller towns who have had the courage to walk away from the mandap," she says. "I am optimistic."
Maybe she doesn't understand all marriages, maybe she's speaking for her own set.
A complex society
"I don't think I live in any kind of insulated bubble. We live in a complex layered society and no matter how rich or beautiful or privileged you are, there is no immunity. You are not even safe in your mother's womb."
And De says for as long as she remembered she has felt an instinctive connect to other women, "always felt responsible for her gender." It's how she's wired. "There's a Greek writer who says that there is only one woman in the world, she has many faces," she says. She's optimistic for the next generation and for the institution of marriage.
"Nothing else has worked!"
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