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

‘THERE’S FAR TOO MUCH MUCK TO RAKE HERE!’
of purpose are strong. She seemed bashful when I suggested her
work would one day be viewed as the foundation of Indian feminist
literature – which it will – and, like so many talented people, she
was dismissive of her talent. She put one word after another: that
was all. I left our chat believing that she genuinely did not realise
how good a writer she was, deciding at the same time that that
might be precisely why she was such a good writer.
Many have agreed since then that Shobha Dé will probably get
the recognition she deserves abroad before she does in India. Very
far from the sentimental melodrama of A Suitable Boy, for example,
Ms. Dé’s novels provide a glimpse of an India few Westerners are
even aware exists and hardly any will ever see. Out of all the authors
Davidar has championed, none is more unique than Shobha Dé,
and none is more suited to Western sensibilities, holding as she
does the two cultures in which she lives in a perfect balance that
acts as an instrument of vision rarely found in literature, and more
useful than a shelf of textbooks in purveying that understanding of
the ‘Other’ we crave from the traders in words and ideas.
That night Rahul Singh said he was throwing a party for me,
inviting people I ought to meet. But first I had an appointment with
a film star.
We met in the Harbour Bar, where every head turned the moment
we walked in, and waiters virtually ignored their other customers,
replacing our peanuts, ashtrays, and drinks and lighting our cigarettes
whenever these opportunities presented themselves. Four peanuts
gone, and a new bowl came; a centimetre of ash required a fresh
receptacle; we must have been served twenty drinks, while actually
drinking less than two; and the slightest suggestion that either of us
intended picking up his pack of smokes provoked a frenzy of action
resulting in nine arms thrusting flames at us as if we were vampires.
‘You must promise not to be using my name,’ said ————.
‘Otherwise I – ’ He mimed cutting his own throat – an action that
brought nine flames to his side.
To be honest, I’d never heard of him before this trip to Bombay,
and I’d certainly never seen one of his films, but I had been assured
that he was ‘going to be the next megastar.’ As in Hollywood,
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