Selective Memory

Shobhaa Dé

Description

Shobhaa D has been many things to many people: supermodel, celebrity journalist, bestselling author, friend, rival, colleague and confidante. In this engagingly candid memoir, a woman who has been a familiar face and name to millions (although few known to her) finally reveals the true self behind the public persona. Insiders know that besides her commitment to work and the frantic pace of her life, Shobhaa D 's first priority in life has always been her family. Here she writes poignantly of her early years, and of her relationship with her parents and siblings, her husband and her children. Written in a consistently confident and candid voice, Selective Memory: Stories from My Life is remarkable for the honesty with which it captures the essence of a fascinating woman who has become a legend in her own time

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Hindi
• Memoir
• Standard Hindi
• India

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184754513
• Langue: English

Extrait

SHOBHAA D

SELECTIVE MEMORY
Stories from My Life
PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Prologue
Glancing Back
Walking Tall
Cutting Loose
Blazing Trails
Shining Through
Sitting Pretty
Flying Solo
Naming Names
Writing On
Getting Ahead
Moving Images
Getting Personal
Feeling Great
Taking Stock
Illustrations
Epilogue
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
SELECTIVE MEMORY
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
Spouse
Superstar India
To Lord Ganesh from whom there can be no secrets and my beloved family, from whom I ve still kept a few.
Prologue
A late night phone call. Early 1997.
I think you should write your autobiography now that you re about to turn fifty.
That was David Davidar.
I m not sure. I don t think it s the right moment to do it. That was me.
There s no right time or wrong time to put your life on the line. David.
Isn t there? Me.
I thought people wrote their memoirs at seventy. Nice number, seventy. It s all behind you. Good times and bad. You want to chronicle it before memory itself fades.
People also write their memoirs at twenty. Nice number again. Twenty. It s all ahead of you. Good and bad. You can t wait to get it all down before life itself hurtles past and memories seem redundant.
Fifty is in between, I said hesitantly. I don t know. I m not sure. Fifty is so . . . non-committal and boring. I hate mid-points.
Look, I think you should do it. Now. David.
I m scared. Me.
Of course you are. It is the scariest experience for anybody in the world. People are terrified at the thought of writing about themselves. They find all kinds of excuses. They lie. They make up. They invent. They rub out. David.
I know. That s why I don t want to do it. Me.
Think of it as a column. A really really long one. That s what your life has been for twenty-five years-an unending column. David.
Has it? Just that? A column?
Maybe.
And then I started to think. Fifty. Funny, I didn t feel it. Fifty. Such finality in that word. Fifty. Stocktaking time. Fifty. Flashback time. Fifty. Ugh. Fifty. Wow. I repeated fifty, fifty times over. It had to sink in. Register. I needed that sense of fifty to fix it. Was I really going to turn fifty a few months from that phone call? And did I want to write the damn book?
I guess I did.
Please go away, I pleaded with the unwritten manuscript, even as I prepared to write it.
Leave me alone, I beseeched as images exploded in my head.
I knew what it was leading up to.
I was readying myself to turn into a monster. It was going to happen the moment I took up my standard writing pad, scribbled the date on the first page, muttered a short prayer to Ganesha and wrote the first words. Something awful would happen to me. It always did. And for the next year, I d become insufferable.
For a woman, a book in progress is like a secret lover she has to hide from her family. Steal time to go back to. Dream about. Luxuriate in. Fantasize about. It s a guilty secret she can t share with anybody. There is a sense of regret-you can t make love to a book or talk to it. And yet, the secret thrill of each encounter provides a high. The book makes you feel desirable, sexy, beautiful, interesting. It s better than the best sex.
The summer of 97. I knew I was getting there. Critical mass time was rapidly approaching. I knew I d resent all intrusions-family excursions, visitors, phone calls, social obligations, school trips, shopping expeditions, TV programmes, books, magazines-anything that required my time and attention.
The worst aspect of writing, whether it s a memoir or a racy novel, is that you can t share the experience with any one. It can be hellishly lonely sometimes. A feeling of such isolation, you ask yourself why you are punishing yourself like this. What for? There have to be better options.
I don t know how others are affected by the process but I become an intensely obsessive and irritatingly preoccupied person. I feel resentful of each second taken away from the writing ritual. My existence is consumed by the act itself. It gets to a point where the pressure is physical, not merely mental. An unbearable pain reverberates through the entire body. The mind starts racing faster than the fingers can keep up. That in turn becomes a cause for frustration. A sense of desperation and urgency dominates every waking hour. I can t concentrate on anything, not even crucial conversations. So much concentration takes its toll.
It s hard to keep one s mind focused on domestic trivia while longing to write those extra pages one has abandoned because of the quarterly pest-control date or an ill-timed PTA meeting. It s even harder to feign interest in family matters, a spouse s routine conversation, a child s prattle, while longing to get back to writing.
Family members complain of neglect, and friends, understanding and simpatico in the initial months, drift away and look to others with more time and concern. I feel the need for a speedbreaker. But there s no way to slow down or stop. A day becomes good when the writing has gone well. A lightness of being takes over. It turns bad if the natural rhythm has missed its beat. That s when blackness envelops one. It s worse, far worse than the worst menstrual cramps. The mind doubles up in pain and there s no relief for that except the next round of productive writing . . . but you aren t sure when that s likely to occur-that evening, the next morning, a week later, maybe two months down the line.
At the 1998 Winter Olympics, I watched the sole Indian representative Shiva Keshavan preparing for the luge-his special event. As he careened down the narrow icy passage on his back, I said to myself, My God. That s me. I m moving so fast, whatever happens now, it s out of my control.
There was just one thing to do. Lie back and enjoy the ride.
David was right. Partially so.
Selective Memory was not an easy book to write. But it wasn t that tough either.
Once I d put my foot into it, I rather enjoyed myself. Lots and lots of writing. Yes. No notes. No dates. No aides-memoirs. No diaries, No clippings. Not even a particularly retentive memory. Just a myriad echoes and images. Mostly colourful, generally pleasant. Looking back wasn t such a bitch after all, or it could be that turning fifty had a lot to do with my changed perspective. At fifty, nothing is at stake. Nothing and nobody matters all that much-not even old adversaries. Enmity itself gets diluted. Poison disappears. Coexistence becomes the key. People cease to affect you with the same intensity.
At fifty, one cuts the fat, trims non-essentials and starts sifting. David s words came back to me constantly: You have the ability to pick out that one characteristic that defines an individual, and bury it in amber. Tap into it. Use it-and you ve got your book. Perhaps. But once I d started, it was the process and not the fate of the book that began to matter. Like everything else, I attributed my altered thinking to the prospect of turning fifty.
When my father decided to hold a Satya-Narayan puja at his residence to mark the event, I went along with the plan without any particular sentiment. He d done it for my older sisters, Mandakini and Kunda, for their fiftieths, skipped it for my brother s, respecting Ashok s sentiments about pujas in general being a waste, and now he was enthusiastically organizing the final one for his youngest child.
As my husband and I took our places in front of the light-eyed, bare-chested, fair-skinned brahmin, my husband wearing a silk dhoti and I a traditional nine-yard Paithani saree, my mind was not on the shlokas the priest would soon be reciting monotonously, or on the elaborate Maharashtrian feast that would follow. I was distractedly thinking of mundane matters-the column I had to write the next day, the clothes that were to be picked up from the laundry, my daughter Arundhati s new gym shoes which I d promised her before school reopened. It was difficult to stay focused on what, for me, was nothing more than incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo. Gradually, however, I began to notice the details surrounding the puja, all the planning and thought that had gone into making this evening auspicious, the pride with which my father (playing solo host for the first time at a religious function in his home, without my mother by his side) had made sure all the ritualistic silver vessels were brought out, brilliantly polished and beautifully displayed around the compact shrine created for the occasion. I saw my sister Kunda s complete involvement as she supervised the proceedings, filling in for our late mother.
Dressed in a resplendent kanjeevaram, Kunda had instinctively and effortlessly slipped into the vacated role, and once or twice when I caught a flash of her purple saree as she swept in and out of the room, I thought I saw my Aie -not someone like her. Not a daughter who resembled her, but Mother herself. I sensed Aie s unmistakable presence and gradually, my mind eliminated the trivia crowding it and started to concentrate on the katha being narrated by the priest. It no longer mattered that his words meant nothing to me. I looked at the fresh flowers, the lotuses and roses, the sm