Forget about it!. Review on Superstar India - Shobha De

*Book Review of Superstar India by Shobha De

Criticism in the blogosphere and the internet** I resolved not to read this writer ever since reading her "politically incorrect" views in the STOI.

So, I read many opinions on the internet on her latest offering, Superstar India. The reviews have not been good, they have been scathing. In the review published by outlookindia.com, the reviewer deep into the review only gives us background info about Mrs. De in a sarcastic tone; how she changed husbands, how she could have done well being a heroine, and other juicy tit-bits. He tells us that he too is a Penguin writer but since Mrs. De is the Queen Bee of Penguin India, so she is given differential treatment.

He says that Mrs. De’s photo donning the front-cover of a book which is about India is indicative of the fact that it is the sexy-at-sixty Mrs. De that Penguin India wants to sell, not the sixty year old India. When this Outlook reviewer finally got down to talking of the book, he criticized her writing saying that she employs phrases like "pretty confused", "pretty sinister" and "pretty spooked". He denounces the book saying, “Superstar India is quite mediocre, written in a style De fine-tuned as a film journalist”. He ends the review on a bitter note:

[quote]

Let me quote one ... passage. It will also give you an idea of her literary style: "It suits everybody to keep the minorities illiterate and insecure. That’s the bitter truth. Hate creates votebanks. Tolerance doesn’t. It’s that simple."

If you too think it is that simple, this is just the book for you.

[unquote]

The opinion I believe is “pretty unequivocal”. One blogger wrote that her tradition of writing on superstars is long; she started with writing on superstar Amitabh Bachchan and Superstar Shah Rukh Khan. This blogger and one another noted that the book is more like a collection of blogs, loosely linked with one another, that there is nothing that we haven’t heard or read before, over and over again – problems concerning India: the growing divide between the rich and the poor, and more along those lines. That there was insufficient research and the book was probably completed in a few months is also opined. Miraculously then, Mrs. De also manages to package the idea that “our time has come”. And when she says that, it is very clear that she is neither on the left nor on the right side of the debate, rather in an undefined space of her own. [That is, she probably does not know whether to support or stand against the tide of neoliberalism since it swept the country when the economic reforms of 1991 were introduced, culminating in 17000+ farmers dying annually since so many years, leaving so many ppl jobless, and creating money elsewhere: at Murthy’s Infosys, to name one.]

To be fair, she does raise some pertinent questions in that she "takes upon the task of debating whether India can yet be accorded the superstar status, or the failings of this nation are still too many to outnumber its achievements" (Outlook), however, it is her reviewing that has been shallow.

Buy this book, rather

Propping alongside Mrs. De’s book in book-malls, is a book in black-cover titled The shape of the beast: interviews with Arundhati Roy. If you are one of those who are fond of buying books newly arrived -- just like buying the fresh stock of apparel -- I suggest you pick that up if you wish to know a thing or two about "Superstar India". This book -- whose two chapters I read -- will stun regular readers/viewers of mainstream media (The Times of India; NDTV) especially those who believe in "Superstar India", and that "our time has come".

My criticism

Broadly speaking then, Mrs. De’s writing encompass but popular opinions in wide circulation on the internet. There is no critical analysis or review or a proper address of any problem, leave alone a new point of view. She did present some new and interesting points of view (at least I hadn’t read them before) when criticizing cricket in her ‘politically incorrect’ columns; but then criticizing state policy, macroeconomics and the state and giving your own views on the same is not the same as criticizing cricket and cricketers.

Given the low quality of the book, I quite believe -- as suggested by mouthshut reviewer, karmacola -- that the timing of the book was highly planned, just as, say, a producer plans the release of his movie around Diwali. That Mrs. De along with India has turned 60 has been part of her PR campaign; ofcourse, she says that as a side-remark, but given the grandiosity of the occassion of the unveiling of her book by Mr. Bachchan, she would have known that even side-remarks would stay in public consciousness; would certainly not be side-lined.

Final Word

Leave this book; read, instead: " The Algebra of Infinite Justice" by Arundhati Roy; if you stand at the left side of political debates, this is the book for you, if you stand on the right, atleast you can properly hate something. Supertstar India should leave you with a feeling of indifference perhaps punctuated by despise, if you are a politically conscious individual. If not, I do not think this is the right book to usher yourself in the debate.