35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘THERE’S FAR TOO MUCH MUCK TO RAKE HERE!’
terms they understood that in bed they were leaden duds, not the
heavenly studs they bragged about being to their friends. Their
wives, she wrote, merely put on an act to protect frail egos and
preserve harmony in the home. It was feminism Indian-style, and
it thrilled as many women as it appalled – for some were ready for
the truth that could set them free.
David Davidar was hardly surprised by Dé’s subject matter. He
had urged her to write the first novel because he sensed she could
do it. She was well known before 1989, when Socialite Evenings was
published, as founder and editor of Stardust, Society, and Celebrity,
three fairly self-explanatory contributions to humankind’s insatiable
hunger for bitchy film fanzines and prurient gossip about the rich
and famous. Her poison pen and her well-placed sources had made
her as feared and despised as she was courted slavishly and read
avidly.
In the prose of her columns Davidar saw the ‘Indlish’ he was after,
the Indian writing in an English freed from its roots. Until recently,
English writing in India had retained pretty much the same form and
style as it had under the Raj. It had been learned in British-run schools,
or even in Britain itself, and, from Tagore to R. K. Narayan, was
generally twee and precious at best, or at worst bloated with floral
oratory like Tennyson on evil drugs.
After Independence, however, Indian English said farewell to
British English and began a life of its own. The British had shipped
back a rich haul of linguistic booty over the years, too; many
commonly used words – pyjamas, jodhpurs, mogul, bazaar, and so
on – were the offspring of what Rahul’s father, Khushwant Singh,
termed promiscuous couplings with Indian languages. Home alone,
Indian English became even more flirtatious among so many exotic
tongues, rapidly evolving into a form as distinct at times as, say, the
Irish English of James Joyce, or the richly varied American English
of Damon Runyon, or Thomas Pynchon, or Alice Walker.
In Shobha Dé we find an English virtually moving toward
Creole. Her narrative is perfectly intelligible but her dialogue is
peppered with Hindi and portmanteau words, is faithful in fact, to
the language her characters would actually speak in real life. Only
someone fairly familiar with the English of Bombay or Delhi would
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