DESIRE WITHOUT APOLOGY

Long before conversations around desire entered mainstream discourse, Shobhaa De was writing them. Now out with her latest book, De charmed the Jaipur Litfest audience with a conversation that rejected easy binaries between sex and desire, youth and ageing, morality and pleasure, and showed how she speaks up for the sensual rights of all generations.

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In a packed session presented by The New Indian Express, De was in conversation with politician and LGBTQ+ rights activist Anish Gawande, discussing her latest book, The Sensual Self (Aleph). The conversation dissected taboos around sensuality and sex, the many ways in which Indian society has learnt to fear, police, and misunderstand one of its most basic human impulses, and the slow erosion of human connection in an age dominated by screens.

De has been a prominent voice in Indian media since the 1970s, writing and editing magazines such as Stardust, Society, and Celebrity. She later established herself as a novelist known for her candid portrayals of socialites and sexuality in books like Socialite Evenings (1989), Starry Nights (1991), and Sultry Days (1994).

She said that growing up in a middle-class Maharashtrian household, desire was never discussed. The word itself, she recalled, felt “intimidating and scary”. Even studying psychology at St Xavier’s College under Jesuit priests left little room to articulate what it meant to be 18, hormonally alive, and full of questions. Curiosity existed, but answers did not—and silence became the default position.

That silence, she said, followed her into adulthood and eventually pushed her to write The Sensual Self, one conceived as a deeply personal act of inquiry—“out of a sense of panic and self-examination”—to understand a basic human impulse.

Desire and shame