Life Lessons From the Ever-buoyant and Ageless Shobhaa De

Given that, every morning, I confront the silvered-streaked intimations of mortality sprouting from my head, I am increasingly curious about people who seem to embody positive aging. Folks, who despite their advancing years, are as high-spirited and sprightly as the youngest generations. One of the icons who still radiates the spunk and moxie of Gen Z, even at 73, is the writer and novelist, Shobhaa De.

When Seventy and to Hell With It! beckoned from a bookstore shelf, I bought it at once. After all, De, like the woman in Jenny Joseph’s poem, Warning, is the sort to defiantly “wear purple” and “spend [her] pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin sandals,” her eyes glinting with an impish irreverence. As De herself puts it, “I refuse to give up and become a harmless old lady.”

The book does not disappoint. This no-holds-barred romp through De’s life and current state of mind invites all readers, young or middle-aged or old, to stop submitting to “rules” that don’t count, and to start living on one’s own terms. To become, despite one’s circumstances, as befikre as possible. Here are some of my personal takeaways from the feisty De.

Carve Out Your Space As A Writer

In her 1929 essay, the author Virginia Woolf had spoken about how capricious and fragile thoughts can be. How easily they can slip past one’s notice, eluding the attention of the thinker, whose space and movements are often confined by patriarchal or oppressive forces. Woolf knew that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

As a writer, De too, is keenly aware of how words and ideas have always shadowed her, but how easily they might slip out of sight, if one doesn’t “catch” the glimmerings. To do so requires time and space, which someone like the prolific De, author of more than twenty books and widely-read newspaper columns, has always been sensitized to: “I am somewhat oversensitive about space – both my own and other people’s.” Like most writers, she ferociously guards her turf, ensuring that her writing-time is not invaded by trespassing others – whether those be members of her large, rambunctious family or earnest friends. She knows too that the space isn’t just physical, but also psychological. It’s a terrain she has consciously enlarged, so that at seventy, she can claim: “I have found it within.”

Take Risks, Flirt With Danger

Despite being a grandmother many times over, De continues to embark on adventures, often deliberately dallying with danger. Just a few years ago, she was at Lahore at 3 a.m., in a “dodgy looking car” with “an unknown driver.”

In De’s case, it’s not just the ‘Nani’ who needs to check if the kids are back home or grandkids tucked in, but the kids themselves, whose irrepressible mother or grandmother is careening around some foreign terrain, with prudent and practical concerns banished from her consciousness. She urges others in their sixth, seventh, eighth or even ninth decades to still take risks, and embark on new adventures. These should be stages of life filled with more “why nots?” than with the jaded “whys?”

Grow as A Parent

With a laudable honesty, De admits to having been an “imperfect” parent, seesawing occasionally from “control” to “remoteness”, because she is, after all like most other parents, endearingly human.

More remarkably, from De’s reminiscences, one gets a sense that she has achieved what most parents aspire to but rarely achieve: an affectionate, reciprocal give-and-take, friendship even with her six kids. As she has discovered, from experience, that each child is different, she continues to guide her now-adult kids. While admitting to her fallibility as a mother, she acknowledges that this role “is the single most important aspect of my existence.”

Draw Your Boundaries on Social Media

Aware that some of her acerbic, snarky, witty and searing columns or tweets are likely to invite trolls, De consciously ignores Twitter trolls. In the meanwhile, she barricades her space on Facebook, interacting only with a chosen group of 150 friends. She would rather exchange meaningful messages and updates with a likeminded or familiar set than fend off the unwanted attentions of aggravating or malicious strangers.

Tolerate Varying Emotions As You Age

De also admits that some stereotypes of “old” people can be hard to live up to, because they might not reflect the real emotions of the “aged”. For instance, as one gets older, “[people] demand a kinder, softer, more tameable version of you.” But one’s internal state might not echo or match this stereotype.

And why should it? As De puts it, anger management does not necessarily get easier as one ages. Even as she is conscious about how destructive anger can be, to the self and others, there are times when she loses her temper over seemingly trivial matters.

And other times, when she does not feel what she is socially expected to feel. For instance, soon after the birth of her third grandchild, she felt her elation dip when she returned home. For no reason whatsoever, she was no longer floating on clouds, as most grandmothers are expected to, but was instead nursing an unexpected or uninvited sadness. But shouldn’t this be normal too? After all, who sets the norms about how grandmothers (or mothers) are expected to feel?

Besides, the romantic inside her refuses to die. If she could choose her feelings and their settings, she would opt to cry in Paris – by the banks of the Seine, amongst kissing lovers and mournful accordions – and laugh in New York, the city where the ludicrous and absurd melds into the everyday.

Stay Curious Rather Than Cool

For most of us, Shobhaa De is already cool, for having broken so many barriers and rebuked norms. But De admits that her children don’t always think so. Once while trying to establish rapport with her youngest daughter, De spoke about some of the latest trending topics. Usually such attempts in the past have been rewarded with glazed looks or a stony indifference. But once in a while, she has garnered a surprised “How do you know that?” Of course, she quips that she too, like her kids, is armed with a smartphone. With the very device that she tries unsuccessfully to banish from dinner-time conversations.

For parents or bosses who want to gel with the younger set, she strongly recommends gleaning their phrases and slang. If you don’t want to be excluded from the cultural discourse, at the very least, you must at least learn the acronyms.

Sometimes Escape Can be Positive

She observes how many women – especially mothers and wives – often yearn to flee stifling or aggravating family situations, but lack the courage to take flight. One of De’s friends – like the character Laura Brown in Michael Cunningham’s book, The Hours – felt completely trapped inside her domestic setup.

But unlike most others, this friend decided to take flight, escaping to Goa, where she lived among a like-minded tribe on a beach shack. Eventually her kids followed her there, and so did the grandkids, “who adore their hip, tattooed grandmother.”

De believes that such an act – of just fleeing the nest and all its tangled responsibilities – is likely to have been a fantasy, at some point or the other, for many women. Of course, few would or could act on it. But sometimes, escape, even if it is to save oneself, can be an act of compassion.

Retain a Passion

She has always been and continues to be a passionate and intrepid traveler. Recently, on a whim, she booked tickets to Iceland, to view the magical Northern Lights. She is the first to organize trips for the whole brood, and often the most energetic inside the bunch, eager to ceaselessly explore the world. She describes how surreal travel still feels to someone like her – growing up, as she did, in a middle-class family with few frills and no trips – and how the whiff of foreign places continues to stir her senses like little else.

Express Yourself Bravely

Surprisingly for a writer, De admits that she herself has often not been as vocal as she should have been. She has learned from her daughters to articulate her views and feelings more unabashedly, even at the risk of provoking confrontations. She says that the courage that many expect her to constantly wear, like some kind of title or badge of honor, is often as elusive a quality, as it might be for other women.

There have been times, when she has been in “denial”, donning a “neutral” or composed façade, when her internal state has been turbulent. At such moments, she retreats to her laptop. She recalls the manner in which her mother often escaped into the kitchen, cooking her way out of some stormy situation. For De, writing has a similar therapeutic quality. Composing sentences helps settle her emotions.

She advises young adults who wish to acquire a particular skill or venture in a new direction to just pick up the necessary gumption and head out into the unknown.

Hang Out With The Young

Even at 73, De has hardly retreated into some secluded or barricaded retirement. She still enjoys “movies, food, dancing and books.” Moreover, she delights in hanging out with young people more than she does with people of her own age.

Liberate Yourself From Musts

She has also freed herself up from strictures she had imposed on her earlier self. At one time, she felt dutybound to read several newspapers and magazines cover to cover. She no longer feels obligated to keep up with all news articles (because, really, who can?) and books and magazine cover stories. Even with information, she realizes the pleasures of simplifying what one takes in.

It’s Fine To be Riddled with Contradictions

On the one hand, De, like any feminist writer, strongly advocates for women’s rights on TV shows or media interviews. On the other hand, she directs a concerned (and sometimes critical) gaze at her kids, when they leave home in the skimpiest of outfits. She worries, like any other mother or Nani might, about their safety, in an environment that is not as progressive as one might want it to be. “One thing in theory, another in practice,” she says.

Time Matters, So Be Bold

At this stage, one also realizes that time matters more than stuff. How you spend the rapidly flashing sequence of successive moments is going to determine the narrative of the rest of your life. Like De, pick up the audacity to live as you wish to, without constantly submitting to social strictures or authoritarian figures.

References

Shobhaa De, Seventy…and to hell with it!, Penguin Random House India, 2017