Superstar India

Shobhaa Dé

Description

Vintage Shobhaa D , with scathing take-offs on everything, from the caste system to male chauvinism, from sex to social pretension . . . in other words, it's all great fun'-Economic Times Watching the preparations for independent India's 60th birthday in 2007, D -poised then to enter her own sixth decade-was struck by the thought, 'Surely my life has taken the same trajectory as the country's!' While she reflected on this, many more questions arose: Does India really deserve to congratulate itself? Has it lived up to the early promises it made to its people? Does D herself believe in India? In Superstar India, an intimate confession to her readers, D answers these questions and discovers a jawan-young-India, ready to find its place in today's world. Witty, passionate and gloriously opinionated, Superstar India celebrates the spirit of a nation that is certainly not about to lose its glow.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History of Asia
• India

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184754247
• Langue: English

Extrait

SHOBHAA D

SUPERSTAR INDIA
From Incredible to Unstoppable
PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Prologue: . . . Because I Believe
Right between the Eyes . . .
Children Know the Truth. Why Question Miracles?
Am I a Tight-Assed Schoolmarm?
Indians Are Sex Machines
Meet My Mrs
Indians Are Peace-Loving
Myself, Shobhaa D . What Is Your Good Name?
Only after a Fashion . . .
Mere Paas Ma Hai
On the Face of It
One Indra Nooyi Does Not a Revolution Make
Parde Ke Peechhe
Revolution. Andolan. Watch Out, the Naxalites Are Here.
Has Anyone Seen a Policeman? Anyone?
Who s Afraid of Mayawati? Well . . . Nearly Everyone.
But When You Say India -What Pops Up?
Help, They re Turning Me into a Gizmo!
Netagiri, Goondagiri, Gandhigiri
Nazar Na Lag Jaaye . . .
Epilogue
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
SUPERSTAR INDIA
Shobhaa D , voted by Reader s Digest as one of India s Most Trusted People and one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in India by Daily News and Analysis , is one of India s highest-selling authors and a popular social commentator. Her works, comprising both fiction and non-fiction, have been featured in comparative literature courses at universities abroad and in India. Her writing has been translated into many Indian languages as well as French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and six children.
Also by the same author
Fiction
Socialite Evenings
Starry Nights
Sultry Days
Sisters
Strange Obsession
Snapshots
Second Thoughts
Non-fiction
Surviving Men
Speedpost
Selective Memory
Spouse
For both my mothers, Aie and India.
And . . . for the one-billion-plus Superindians who have made India a global superstar!
Prologue . . . Because I Believe
B humibol Adulyadej, Thailand s beloved king, turned eighty in December 2007. Millions of his loyal subjects wore yellow on that day. Why? Yellow happens to be the ruler s favourite colour, and his people wanted to express their love and respect for the world s longest reigning monarch by being colour-coordinated with him on his special day. It was an entirely spontaneous, untutored gesture. No manipulation involved. Nobody was paid to conform to the yellow dress code. What a sweet and simple way of demonstrating solidarity and commitment, I thought to myself as I scanned the papers the next morning. Would such a thing happen in today s India? Is there even a single individual with the capacity to touch our hearts, inspire us, lead us? Alas, the answer is a flat and disheartening no .
What then has given India its special glow, its special status? I asked myself that question at least a hundred times while writing this book. I believe I finally have my answer. To be a superpower, you need super people. India s biggest strength lies there-we are a super people!
The answer surprised me. It was that obvious! And yet, it may just be India s best-kept secret. The world is suddenly looking at us with wonderment, even a tinge of envy. India counts. India rocks! India is hot .
Why now? What has changed? I believe it is because we have taken the world by surprise. Why, we have taken even ourselves by surprise! We see our freshly-minted image and wonder, Is that really us? There is charming disbelief in that reaction. But there is also renewed confidence. We have finally started believing in us! Reason enough to rejoice. And with this self-belief, we have started renegotiating our past equation with the world. We are in the happy position to do so, that, too, on our own terms. And because of this new-found assertiveness, we are finally ready to invest in ourselves. We know India is offering the best returns. Why look outside, as we once did, when the dazzling story of success and prosperity is unfolding right here, right now?
I have a small confession to make. When I began the book, I had a Bollywood song buzzing inside my head. Where s the party tonight? , the compellingly catchy track from a widely discussed movie, perfectly captured my upbeat feelings towards India, and, therefore, the book. In fact, I was sorely tempted to make it the theme song for the project, and almost did. But as I continued writing, the heady euphoria of the first few weeks got replaced by a more sober emotion. For us to leverage and sustain the India Moment that is dominating our psyche at present, we also need a few reality checks to keep us on course.
Even as I took a long, hard look at some of the obvious downsides (Q: What are the three things keeping India down? A: Corruption. Corruption. Corruption. ), I still felt the upsides (Q: What s so fantastic about the India Story? A: People. People. People ) tilted the scales in our favour. God! If only we knew how to better utilize our greatest national asset-the billion-plus people who make us what we are. Either we see them in this positive light and maximize the benefits of those daunting numbers. Or we foolishly look at our population as a liability and throw away a natural advantage.
Statistics can be as terrifying or reassuring as we d like them to be. They are mere numbers after all. It is a fact that 77 per cent of India live on less than twenty rupees a day. Let s not sweep these grim digits under the carpet. But let us also pay attention to another, equally relevant statistic: 50 per cent of India is under thirty-five years of age. That makes us a remarkably young country, with a youth force of half-a-billion! It is entirely up to us how we harness those energies, motivate this gigantic mass and get going. Never before has Mera Bharat Mahaan been seen as Mera Bharat Jawan . It is indeed a fantastically dynamic growth period in India s sixty-year-old life, and we should make the most of our resource-the twenty- and thirty-somethings who are driving the economic spurt. The future is here-and it is appealingly youthful. These are the new kids on the block. India s hopes, dreams and aspirations rest with them. Will they deliver?
On a far more personal level, this is my special love letter to my country. I want the world to fall in love with India.
To go back to a Bollywood song again, Yeh mera prem patra padkar, ki tum naraaz na hona . . . This is a story about India. My India. It is a very personal story. You see, I am exactly as old as India. So, in a wonderful way, I am very much a part of the India story. I have watched the country change-have been a vital part of that change myself. As they say in business circles, I am fully invested in India. Always have been. I have never considered living anywhere else, never sought opportunities overseas, never fled, despite the odds. I kept the faith. And-YES!-my faith has paid off.
I was an early believer. India has that effect on people. For, India is very easy to fall in love with! Impossible and demanding. Exasperating and annoying. But equally enchanting and alluring, captivating and quixotic. It is difficult for me to be dispassionate about India. I embraced it a long time ago, the way I embraced my own mother. What makes India such a Superstar in my eyes? Don t most children think that about their mothers? Today, Aie, my biological mother, is no more. But I can still claim, Mere paas Ma hai. I have India. I feel blessed.
Shobhaa D
March 2008
Right between the Eyes . . .
X mas. Agra. Cold. Cold and foggy. My husband and I had driven to the city that exists for one reason alone-the Taj Mahal. Like Cairo and the Pyramids. Agra and the Taj. . . they go hand-in-hand. Just like the freshly-scrubbed, neatly-dressed schoolchildren we saw, making their way to school, skipping along happily on an unpaved, dusty road right outside the city limits of this historic town. Our guide, Mr Dubey, started on his spiel as my eyes followed the kids. They d gotten off the road now, and were running across a mustard field. It was a scene straight out of a Yash Chopra film.
Every imaginable prop was in place -a village woman in a ghungat was drawing water from a well, a shepherd was tending to his flock of well-fed sheep, using a neem twig to get the strays back in line, sand merchants were unloading sacks at the local mandi , as mica flakes caught the light and twinkled happily. Donkey carts laden with foodgrain took the same narrow road as hired vehicles of tourists doing Agra in a day. Tourists, like ourselves. Yes, us. Tourists in our own country. The other India. The one we know so little about. And like any outsiders, my husband and I commented on the backwardness of the countryside and wondered what sort of an India those schoolkids would experience. Would they be excluded from the euphoria? Would they even get to finish their schooling and dream a bigger dream than their parents dared to?
Worse . . . were they already reconciled to their current reality? Did they even know that while empowered, urban India was rejoicing wildly and talking recklessly about being a super-super-power, here, in the only city of the world boasting-not one, but-three significant Heritage Sites (the magnificent Agra Fort, the even more magnificent Fatehpur Sikri and that wonder-of-wonders, the luminous mausoleum known simply as the Taj), the picture was pretty dismal.
Shabby jhuggies and jhopdis line the unimpressive route to the most-recognized Monument to Love . I thought of all the VVIPs who d taken the same uneven highway over the years, from the Kennedys and Bill and Chelsea Clinton to Princess Diana and the Musharrafs. They d seen our squalor, too! Suddenly, I felt defensive and proprietorial-so what if we didn t have super highways and fast tracks? So what if the only impressive milestones along that road to Fatehpur Sikri were built by Emperor Akbar in the sixteenth century? Those schoolkids looked so happy running through that field of yellow . . . one of them had a colourful kite in his hand that the others were trying to grab. Maybe