WARNING! DANGER AHEAD FOR - THE PRUDISH PURITANICAL…SHOBHAA DE STRIKES AGAIN!! Monojit Lahiri offers personalized observations on the unstoppable, age-defying Buddi Hogi Teri Amma who’s latest offering covering sensuality, love, sex and romance.

In this sharp, irreverent literary commentary, Monojit Lahiri examines Shobhaa De’s enduring cultural impact and her latest book The Sensual Self, exploring sensuality, desire, aging, and defiance in modern Indian English writing. The piece celebrates De’s unapologetic voice, provocative legacy, and fearless challenge to moral conservatism.

Shobhaa De is truly one of a kind. Love her, hate her, you can’t ignore her!!
On the one hand, her very name disgusts the serious academic types. Trash-with-flash. Porn Queen. Ms Viagra. Agent provocateur of everything relating to sex. The desi Jackie Collins catering to the lowest common denominator, targeting the baser instincts of an unwashed and culturally vulnerable section of society, cleverly seducing them to re-visit dangerous hidden truths forever felt, but never in their wildest dreams dared to play out. The sadhak-chaap Goddess of sex sagas providing orgasmic kathakali pop language fashion but clothed in language that appeared sophisticatedly refined, frequently referring to the masters of art and culture to fake respectability!!
The Cult Following and the Counter-Argument
On the other side, her zillion fans, whom she’s got by the S&C — shot & curly — ever since Socialite Evenings and Starry Nights fired their lives and libido, adore her unapologetic irreverence, frank and fearless take on relationships, marriage, gender equality and sexuality. They love her hard-focus on high-society, glamour, scandal and exploring vicissitudes of the urban elite woman. She has often been chastised as being too blatantly commercial, but her admirers argue that it aligns perfectly with today’s consumer-driven times and the changing landscape of modern society.

Besides, they add, De has never pretended to compete with Vikram Seth, Amitabh Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy and gang. She has created, over time, a style niche of her own, that has continued to resonate with readers all over the world. At the end of the day, they conclude, she is like street-food that masses love and can relate to, spicy, chaatpata, irresistible!

Her material is not fine-dining (all posh and formal) but deliciously uncomplicated, reader-friendly and often thought-provoking for the non-judgmental. It tickles both the carnal and cerebral sensibilities. It doesn’t lecture on the human condition inspire YAWN but…generates GRRRR!!

Stardust, Scandal and the Birth of a Phenomenon

At a personal level, I have known Shobhaa De from the time she pathbreaking STARDUST exploded on the scene. Although professionally a Kolkata-based copy writer with an A-list Ad agency [HTA/JWT], film journalism was my passion, with Bollywood its centre-point. I was not only totally familiar with the current film-mag scene — Filmfare, Star n Style, Film World — that existed, but contributed to each of them quite regularly. Stardust, for me was indeed a god-send for two reasons. It’s gorgeous, fun, super-cool bindass editor apart, its mandate and agenda of creating provocative, irreverent, iconoclastic content in in-your-face style with mischievous chutzpah as calling card, was a real killer!

This vision was a real ball-breaker both for the star-industry readers and with the exception of the redoubtable Devi’s Frankly Speaking column in S&S, (where she fused gossip and scandal in a way that terrified staid and delighted readers) the scene was pretty tame with Aal Is well the signature tune!!

Once De was done with STARDUST and her other editorial numbers — SOCIETY and CELEBRITY — she moved into writing novels…man, what a blowout debut and follow-ups! In all truth, post Socialite Evenings and Starry Nights, to compare her to America’s Jackie Collins was not too off-centre. Never was such bold and startling exploration of sex and desire played out in the history of India’s English-language publishing.

Readers read, fainted, awoke and raced to the bookstores! De had struck again this time penetrating areas most dangerously lethal, hidden — the erogenous zones! In deliciously colourful and racy language, she let fly strokes that captivated, captured conquered public imagination. She was a best-seller with both, her books and her persona invited to all literary and non-literary events as a STAR! Fans were thrilled at interactive meets. Oliver Twist fashion, begged for more…! De — generosity inscribed in her title — obliged with all cylinders firing!

Over time, she expanded her bandwidth to get in short stories, essays etc and moved into columnist mode covering subjects like lifestyle and politics. A new sense of urgency, purpose and maturity entered her work, prompting new readers to bogey into her radar!!

The Sensual Self and the Defiance of Age
Cut to her new book, The Sensual Self, where she insists sensuality has no expiry date. Covering 3 sections, “The language of love, Mating habits in the 21st century and Love in Autumn”, De blends her trademark provocative startle friendly moves with solidly insightful and brutally honest home-truths that engage, entertain, enrich and even enlighten.
Her delightfully blasphemous prologue sets the tone for the sweet tsunami to flow and takes the terror out for the stuff all set to come. She lets it all hang out, without fear or favour.

For me, I hugely loved the charming segment in the very first chapter where bhutta and guava played cupid in her pyaar ki kahani! I also absolutely loved her mom sweetly suggesting to her to-be-hubby to present her a handbag to keep her comb, much to the shocked disapproval of Madam. Also delicious are her views on courtship and romance and how it has been replaced by wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am, her long sigh on the fade-out of love letters, replaced by emojis, her wry amusement at her discomfort and displeasure at raunchy words used in family conversations, although she uses them, full on, in her books… but let me not play spoiler!!

If books could kill, The Sensual Self is definitely Khaana No 1, the most seductive phonetic no.1! Grab it and zoom to a time and place you will really rock!

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