The Insatiable Feminism Of The Fabulous Shobhaa De

04/11/23 • 39 min

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That was my guest today, the incomparable Shobhaa De.
Shobhaa is one of the most famous writers in India and her reputation has travelled everywhere, but it behooves me to talk about the realpolitik of Shobhaa De’s literature.
Let me tell you why Shobhaa De is so significant to English writing in India. Not only was her great success as an author inspiring, but to my mind, the most significant thing I can say about Shobhaa is that she kicked down the doors for generations of women writers who followed her.
Uniquely, she gave women a voice. At the risk of reduction, I’ll venture that her novels explore the lives and loves of Indian women who embrace their sensuality without apology.
Despite, simply living their lives is often a patriarchy-fostered challenge, her protagonists are never sad victims. They follow their dreams rather than fit into society's expectations. At the fount of their sentience, they will not be marginalised.
I imagine that such a narrative is even possible only because Shobhaa’s prose is an honest prose, without artifice.

And funny. But the lightness she brings to this prose often belies the dark realities that she is addressing. While most literature of this genre tends to be disconsolate... even self-pitying— the humour I speak of, in Shobhaa’s narratives, is a testament to her skill as a writer.
For this reason, I am sure, her writing has been the subject of almost one hundred academic dissertations—of researchers and scholars in universities around the world—studying feminist literature—and I imagine this number is only growing.
Recently, Shobhaa launched her latest book titled “Insatiable”, and it is a memoir filled with anecdotes and personal experiences—told interestingly from the perspective of food. Artfully, Shobhaa De crafts a narrative using food as the conduit for descriptions of events in her life that happened around it.
In literature, eating and not-eating are always symbolic, and food always means something other than mere food. Food is a fun metaphor in literature. Ernest Hemingway used it as did Shobhaa’s favourites, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald.
And now, here she is, joining me from her home in Bombay to talk about her life and literature.
ABOUT SHOBHAA DE
Shobhaa Dé, voted by Reader's Digest as one of 'India's Most Trusted People' and by Daily News and Analysis as one of the '50 Most Powerful Women in India', is a bestselling author and a popular social commentator. Her works, both fiction and non-fiction, have been featured in comparative literature courses at universities in India and abroad. Her writing has been translated into many languages including Hindi, Marathi, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, among others. Shobhaa lives in Mumbai with her family.
Buy Insatiable: https://amzn.to/3KKJ2mZ
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Nilanjana Roy And The Literature Of The Black River

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Nilanjana Roy is the girl who, as a child, ate books — in fact, she was known to have devoured them whole. This is obviously a reference to her book The Girl Who Ate Books, a paean to writing, writers and other such pursuit.
Nilanjana is, most recently, author of the novel, Black River and she is my guest on The Literary City and we will talk about her fascinating career, from her early love of reading and writing, which led to her becoming a respected voice in the literary world.
One of Nilanjana’s better known works is "The Wildings," a novel that tells the story of a community of cats who must band together to protect their home from a menacing force. But for me, it is the "The Girl Who Ate Books" — a memoir in which she reflects on her lifelong relationship with literature and evidently, the impact it has had on her life.
In addition to being a novelist, Nilanjana has been a journalist — and something that all journalists agree on is that it provides a certain respect for fact and a discipline of prose — and Nilajana's writing reflects this in spades.
She is also a columnist for reputable publications and consequent to her being a literary commentator, she has views on the evolution of literature in India and her book, The Girl Who Ate Books showcases that side of her very well.
I enjoyed Black River mainly because it had a certain lyrical quality and a journalist’s eye for detail, all of which led to a murder mystery that is at once, a social commentary.

So much to talk to her about. Here she is, joining me from her home in New Delhi.
ABOUT NILANJANA ROY
Nilanjana S Roy is a writer, editor, columnist and compulsive reader. Born in Kolkata, she lives in New Delhi, a combination of cities that make her an expert on stray cats, homicides and brooding political dystopias. She is the author of Black River, a novel set in and around Delhi, the award-winning fantasy duology, The Wildings, and a collection of essays, The Girl Who Ate Books. She has edited three anthologies, including Our Freedoms, and writes a column on books for the Financial Times.
Buy Black River: https://amzn.to/40meahC
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in "What's That Word?!", where they discuss the origin of the word, "NICKNAME".
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John Keane And The Shortest History Of Democracy

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There are many who believe that the cradle of democracy was Greece. But if anything, Greece may lay claim to the etymology of the word democracy, but not to democracy itself. Whence then?
The short answer by many historians is that the first evidence of democracy was in the Syrian-Mesopotamian region (Mesopotamia would be a large region around Iran as we know it today). That was around 2500 BC and this democracy was characterised by assemblies of people. And then—about 1000 years later—around 1500 BC the Indian sub-continent saw people assembling for public governance.
And in the thousands of years since, we have seen the growth of democracy—marked by greater inclusiveness of its stakeholders. To see all of it laid out in a convenient timeline is both fascinating and illuminating because it provides a ready reference and immediate context.
My guest today is John Keane historian and Professor of Politics, at the University of Sydney. John Keane is credited with introducing and popularising the term "Monitory Democracy" in his book "The Life and Death of Democracy," published in 2009. His formulation of "Monitory Democracy" has gained widespread recognition and influence in the field of political theory, as a distinct and important form of democratic governance.
John’s latest book, The Shortest History Of Democracy, is a concise journey through the history of democracy, from ancient Greece to the present day. It sets out the origins you really need to know about democracy. To be able to pull this off in less than only 250 pages, would take a lifetime of learning.
John Keane’s contributions to the field of political science have been both profound and influential. His research has focused on a wide range of topics, from democratisation and globalisation to political violence and the role of media in politics.
But it all begs the question that very few can answer and I am not one of them: what is democracy? I grew up completely convinced that my government if you like is the moral equivalent of an apartment building manager, to whom I would offer this job description: “Keep things clean, safe and in working condition and you don’t get to decide I can and cannot watch on cable TV.”
But in reality, well, the study of democracy and its history is the reality in which we live, an always fluid—even roller-coaster—state of affairs it seems. But the importance of a historian in this mix goes back to that time-worn adage about repeating history.
I can't help but wonder: what went right, what went wrong, and where is democracy headed and this is a question that really visits all of us... even our listeners who don’t live in a democracy.
This is a timeless conversation that I can't wait to have with John. Happily, I don’t have to wait, because here is he joining me from Sydney, Australia.
ABOUT JOHN KEANE
He is a Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and the WZB (Berlin). Renowned globally for his creative thinking about politics, history, media and democracy, The Times of London described him as among the country’s leading political thinkers The Australian Broadcasting Corporation speaks of him as one of Australia’s great intellectual exports.
Buy The Shortest History Of Democracy: https://amzn.to/3LlsWAj
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in "What's That Word?!", where they discuss the origin of the phrase, "TO HELL IN A HAND BASKET".
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