Age is just a number: Financial Express: 19th February 2023

 

Age is just a number

Life can be lived to the fullest at any stage

The incidents penciled by the author are very personal and involve her family members and will resonate with her friends, but would be of no interest to the lay reader.

Insatiable: My hunger for life
Shobhaa De
Harper Collins
283 pages, Rs 699

The author goes to a book store and sees a man fretting over not finding a book on the shelf. When asked, the reply is that he is searching for the book he has written. He adds that he is not Shobhaa De whose books are always on the front display. This is very pertinent when it comes to the book Insatiable by De. It is a collection of thoughts post-covid and quite different from her earlier publications and not really meant to excite. Written like a diary, it is quite unpretentious, but interestingly finds a publisher, which others would find difficult, as it is penned by a celebrity.

The incidents penciled by the author are very personal and involve her family members and will resonate with her friends, but would be of no interest to the lay reader. She retains her wit and forthrightness while writing, which is vintage De. She continues to be droll as she writes about her Maharashtrian background and describes the values which some people of the community will give an affirmative nod to. She also takes her shot at the Shiv Sena when she has to choose a menu for visitors and does not want to get into trouble, like she did with the vada-pav controversy. And she adds tongue in cheek that our PM would agree with Bagehot, who said that to be an effective symbol one needs to be seen all the time.

One can get a peep into how high society lives in this narrative- the parties, travel, glamour and glitz. Life begins in what we call SoBo (south Bombay or Mumbai) and ends at the Worli-Bandra sea link for such celebrities.

There is nonetheless a certain zest in her life which is revealed through the book, with the takeaway that age does not come in the way of living life to the fullest, both in terms of appearance and attitude, which should be an inspiration for even grandmothers. That is ‘hunger for life’. She shows that at any age one can have the best of champagne and wine and still keep fasts and be religious and believe in horoscopes. She does exhibit signs of melancholy at the thought of aging and her knees going weak, but that’s fleeting.

There are some throwbacks to the past and people like MF Hussain, Aamir Khan and Salman Rushdie, with a bit of old gossip being shared by the author, like sharing a table with Rushdie with Padma Lakshmi. But it’s too little and far between, which can be a disappointment for readers.

Insatiable can be likened to probably the Karan Johar show on TV where one enters a world that is unreal to most of the audience. It is engaging to begin with, but gets mundane subsequently. But then diaries are personal and are not meant to excite.