Rtn. Manjeet Kripalani in conversation with Shobhaa De on Lockdown Liaisons, her new book that explores the question: what did you do during the lockdown?
MANJEET: SHOBHAA DE’S NEW BOOK LOCKDOWN LIAISONS CHRONICLES SOCIETY AND ITS CHANGES DURING THE LOCKDOWN. WHAT TRIGGERED THE IDEA OF THIS BOOK?
Shobhaa De: These stories reflect all that we have been going through. We have our coping mechanisms; some people cook, some people acquire new skills, some people have joined online classes, some bake, some whip up Dalgona coffee. The voices in the book range from a migrant worker leaving Mumbai to two housewives trapped in their homes with their
spouses after many years of not having that kind of togetherness.
Sharing these voices was a satisfying experience because as a writer of fiction and non-fiction, it’s important to chronicle what is going on. This is something I have had the discipline of doing as a columnist anyway as I have been doing three to four weekly columns for the last 45 years.
What I heard during lockdown, however, on different platforms, became a fictionalised part of the voices I heard. Every single story was narrated in first person. So you are actually listening to a person who is saying what they felt and said, and remembered, rather than in a third person voice because every fiction writer needs to bind a connection of short stories together. They can’t be just random voices that do not hold together or acknowledge you. I was lucky that Simon and Schuster were willing to step in immediately and publish it right away. It was launched last week with an official launch on August 5, by Sonali Bendre’s book club which has a fabulous following with informed readers who connect with writers and engage with book reading in a meaningful way. It is, as of now, available on Amazon.
Manjeet: Can you talk to us about the high and lows of relationships between spouses in this lockdown?
Shobha: It has impacted relationships the most because there are things that we have taken for granted including the people we share our lives with. After years of intimacy and togetherness we discover that we don’t know each other at all or have moved apart dramatically while we are busy chasing career goals. Or, one could be engaged with other activities, not necessarily one’s partner’s life and when that comes to the core in a way as powerful as it did during the lockdown, it leads to tremendous stress, friction and a feeling of being trapped with someone who has suddenly become a stranger.
The focus on relationships is important because that is all that we have. The lockdown has given us the needed force to ask ourselves what is important to us and then move on to share that life, the past, the present and we start worrying a bit, or too much because that is a big question mark. The lockdown has impacted us on so many different fronts and the economic front has impacted the relationship the most, especially for the young people who are dealing with job loss, loss of income, their savings have gone down and they have EMIs to pay. Children are getting on their nerves and couples have had to deal with shared housework. So, all these are definitely a stress in the Covid lockdown.
Manjeet: The lockdown has put stress on not just ordinary people but extraordinary people and we know, from the apparent death or suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput, this talented actor and it has all come out. Everything has come out during this lockdown. Can you tell us about this nepotism?
Shobhaa: Nepotism was actually raised much before his death, by Kangana Ranaut, on Koffee with Karan and she put it out there on the table and that led to a lot of controversy inside and outside of Bollywood.
Sometimes, we get mixed up with nepotism and favouritism. Like a lawyer’s child may gravitate towards a career in law, a doctor’s child may be interested in medical, an engineer’s child will be exposed most to what the parents are doing, engineering as the first option. So, if a parent is encouraging the child to get into a field which the child is familiar with and may have a propensity for, that is not called nepotism.
What happens in Bollywood is slightly different. Of course, a great actor or acting family’s child will be giving the first initial break to get into the movies but after that the audience is not going to pay good money to watch a dud. Similarly, if a doctor’s child does not qualify for a tough exam, that is the end of the story. You can only nudge someone but you cannot make a mega success of someone who is beyond redemption, particularly in Bollywood. So, to blame all on nepotism is wrong and different to pointing out to favouritism which is blatant and exclusive and a totally different topic on the outsider-insider debate.
A person like Sushant, coming from Patna, with all the talent in the world, can be made to feel diminished by a certain sect in Bollywood which can exclude you from their little cosy club. It happens in any industry, business, across the board, journalism; when they don’t like you or approve of you, they can try to push you out of their little clubs – in case of Bollywood, there is not a single club, there are many clubs.
Some people are strong enough to push themselves and survive despite it and have faith in the fans and their audience. They become tough and invulnerable and they let their movies speak for them. In case of Sushant, we don’t know what it was. Now, a guy who has turned up from Patna to enthusiastically work on the case, has been quarantined. It has become a state vs state and it has become a political tamasha out of which nothing is going to emerge, according to me. Whether he took his own life or something happened, let the agency decide. We will have to meekly and mutely accept whatever they tell us, because we really don’t know.
Manjeet: Shobhaa, we don’t see you on TV debates anymore, why is that?
Shobhaa: I took an informed decision about a year and a half ago that I would not be a part of that circus. I get 10 calls a day but I refuse to participate in what has now become a monumental joke for viewers. It is no longer intelligent TV, it is no longer informed debate, it is no longer about people being able to express their opinion on behalf of citizens which is my primary objective of being on TV in the first place. Because the regular Joe, the citizen, has no voice in India.
I had other platforms where I could express myself but there is no avenue for the average person to say what they want to say because who cares and who listens? Today, the TV debate is one big shouting match and it is insulting and beyond anything it is ignorant. The anchors are no longer journalists, they are performers. And they are acting all the time in a way that it is so hysterical, it will shame a C grade Bollywood star to see their performance sometime. As for the people who get on board, for some it is important to raise their public profile. For me, that has never been the objective. I don’t need to seek validation from anybody. I was doing it for a different purpose and that purpose no longer holds in the current environment, I am not interested. So, I just walked away from TV and I refuse to participate on the panel discussion where all the panel does is shout and insult everybody who is called, that is not called a debate. That is called harassment.
Manjeet: So, Shobhaa, you have been subject to harassment, you had 24×7 police security and now, in addition to that, there has been a transfer of this kind of harassment through social media through trolling. How does one handle that, because even in a smallest thing, if you make a comment that people don’t really like, there are many ignorant or non-ignorant people who jump at you. How does one handle that?
Shobhaa: I put it very simply, if you can’t stand the heat of the kitchen, you don’t get in it at all. The heat has never bothered me. I have lived with controversy all my professional life and it doesn’t faze me. Nothing and nobody can scare me. So, bring it on, whether it is people at our doorstep, threatening to blacken my face or kill me, death threats, rape threats all are routine. I get them every single day. My response is more important than trolling. The trolling is just an anonymous crowd of cowards, they don’t even put their names for the views that they put, they are illiterate, sometimes I just laugh at the comments because to even come up with those words and especially when a woman is concerned, it is always a sexual threat.
Now this is something that women across the world are dealing with. Either you let that get to you or say I will continue to say what I say and the trolls can continue to do what they want to do and that has been my attitude throughout. So, it doesn’t bother me because I simply do not engage with that. The minute you engage with trolls, with anybody on Twitter, you get the chain of ugly words, it’s no purpose at all. I have said what I had to say and I am happy to defend it in every way at any platform in a legal manner but I will not engage with the trolls who are anonymous.
Manjeet: So, your response is, just don’t respond?
Shobhaa: Never, because you descend to their level if you do that and it is not worth it. And the words of Queen Victoria always comes back to me, and I have always lived by that: ‘Never explain – never complain. You do what you have to do, live with your decisions.’ And the police protection was such a big joke. I finally went to the Cuffe Parade police station and told them to let the two gentlemen from SPG do something more worthwhile than hang around with me because I am really nobody and there are far more worthwhile people in the city to protect and the city itself is hidden with so many issues that require policing. I should be the least of your concern; I am more than capable of handling myself whatever the threats are and, mind you, this is before the Gauri Lankesh murder and a person actually publishing the names of five women, including me, threatening us with serial assassinations and so on. But what can anybody do, what will those guys do if that happens? Actually, you have no protection, if you ask me. If someone is out to get you, will you be living with that fear 24×7? That’s not me! And I never prefer that.
Manjeet – getting back to cities, we are hoping that this Coronavirus will get the government to think of moving people out of the slums and actually providing affordable housing in the city. Shobha how do you see? Do you think this will change? Can we be hopeful or should we just continue to worry?
Shobhaa: We should always be helpful because the vote is in our hands. Whoever is not performing should be voted out. What you are talking about has happened in the city, the affordable housing for the underprivileged, more than 20-25 years ago. Instead we have had a situation of government that have looted the city and grabbed the land and no accountability, a corrupt BMC, corrupt people in power who have no concern for the underprivileged at all.
All the pockets that we see around in the area we are in are all created by the vote banks by politicians, so unless we are in a position to take on the parties and people and whoever is responsible for looting this wonderful city of ours for marginalising thousand and billions of people, for exploiting the migrant workers. We have seen what has happened with the exit of migrant workers, the city has virtually come to a standstill. Yesterday I was at the Colaba market, which could have remained opened but it is not open, the small vendors and shops are not open because there is nobody to man those shops. It’s only the owners that are left and everybody has gone back to their villages and nobody is in a hurry to get back to Mumbai except on construction sites. They are going to continue to grab and destroy our coastline and mangroves and in the meantime we will sit there passively, we can write and speak and tweet and do whatever I want but I am not a street fighter. I cannot take on the gundas. I cannot be out there as an activist or protesting something that is taking place. So housing is and then education is not only the duties of politicians to provide but they are every citizen’s rights to a better quality of life. But who is providing it? It’s not Maharashtra, all of India is suffering.
