Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Brunch
INTIMACY IN THE TIME OF CORONA
Love, lust and fantasy take centre stage in Shobhaa De’s latest outing, penned during the pandemic
Two months into the lockdown, writer Shobhaa De has penned an entire book. “The lockdown has created countless new spaces for all of us to explore our own creative potential. We have the time and the impetus to document this strange new menace. So many thoughts crowd my mind! So many emotional insights surface,” she says.
HOOKED AND BOOKED
The book ‘emerged’ organically, says Shobhaa. “The world had turned topsy turvy overnight. There was enormous confusion and fear,” she explains. “People are losing their jobs, but more than anything else, they are losing their bearings. They can no longer take anything for granted.”
Just two weeks into the lockdown, her head was bursting with ideas and images. “I had finished my novel Srilaaji ahead of schedule, and all of a sudden, these stories and voices started speaking to me. I didn’t think! I just wrote! I wrote in a fury, sometimes managing a story a day,” she says. “These are like internal monologues of different people coping with the unexpectedness of the bizarre situation.”
Titled Lockdown Liaisons, these are short stories dealing with fantasy, sensuality, love, desire and intimacy. “Intimacy has become a rare commodity in our over busy, over stressed lives. Intimacy scares us! That’s because we have lost touch with our basic
“INTIMACY HAS BECOME A RARE COMMODITY IN OUR OVER BUSY, OVER STRESSED LIVES BECAUSE WE’VE LOST
TOUCH WITH OUR BASIC FEELINGS”
feelings,” says Shobhaa. “But the lockdown has forced a lot of us to confront our emotional failures and shortcomings.
I see a very complex postpandemic emotional grid evolving, especially when it comes to romantic, sexual, and conjugal relationships. It is developing as we speak.”
THE NEW VLOGGER IN TOWN
Shobhaa recently started an Instagram series called #lockdownchronicles! “I started it on pure whim, never for a moment imagining anybody would be interested. But now it will be
In December 2015, during a breakfast session I hosted for a conclave for Business Today magazine, Milind Soman threw me off balance.
This was the year “India’s last male supermodel” had won the Ironman Race in Europe and despite crying himself hoarse with humility, saying that he was indeed just one of six Indian men who had completed the race that year, Milind Soman – at 50 – was back to being what he was best at: a poster boy.
Women swooned. The men didn’t envy. They wanted to emulate!
That morning on stage, my attempt was to wake the sleepy corporate crowd up from their reverie. So I attempted a Kjo-style Rapid Fire: “If a girl half your age proposes marriage, what will you tell her?” I asked.
Milind smiled that easy smile, and with a flicker of contemplation, stumped me with his reply: “My girlfriend is half my age and I’m going to ask her to marry me!”
Cut to the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit exactly a year later, where Milind Soman had just conducted a chat with international supermodel Naomi Campbell. “I want to introduce you to someone,” he told me, unusually excited. My heart skipped a beat: it had to be Naomi Campbell!
Instead, it turned out to be 25-year-old girl with bright eyes and an infectious smile, Ankita Konwar. “Meet my fiancé,” Milind said, entwining his fingers in hers, looking into her eyes, not noticing me go off balance again. “Jamal, Ankita really wants to meet Salman Khan. How can we make this happen?”
AGE NO BAR
Marriages with age differences are no new thing, and certainly not anything to be scorned. Yet, for a star of Milind Soman’s stature, a national level swimming champion,
India’s best-known male model and a mainstream Bollywood actor, to make public his affection for a girl half his age was unusual to say the least.
But just four months later, Milind Soman, 52, and flight attendent Ankita Konwar, 26, after four years of dating, tied the knot.
“To be honest, Ankita and I spoke about the concept of marriage and our age difference when we went on our first date six years ago and agreed marriage wasn’t really important to either of us,” says Milind. “I don’t know when all that changed, but I am glad that it did.”
“ANKITA AND I SPOKE ABOUT OUR AGE DIFFERENCE WHEN WE WENT ON OUR FIRST DATE SIX YEARS AGO”