“I believe for the longest time in a country like ours, which is marinated in all things sensual—whether it’s the saree we wear, our spices, our weather, our colours—everything about India once shouted sensuality. Then somewhere down the line, the British came and the party was over. What we were left with was Victorian prudery, as bland and boring as their cuisine,” said novelist and columnist Shobha De, opening her session on the second day of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
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 for 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)—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
De, who has written extensively about desire, sex, and sensuality since the 1980s, said Indian society is still learning how to speak honestly about desire and its innateness. “Young girls, in particular, are made to feel apologetic, ashamed, or dirty,”
The cost of this silence, she argued, is increasingly visible among younger generations navigating intimacy in the aftermath of the pandemic.“In an era of social media, where influences are so strong on young minds, they don’t know the difference between sexuality, sensuality, lovemaking, and plain copulation. There is no distinction, no subtlety, no nuance,” she said, adding that this confusion has resulted in a growing disinterest in intimacy itself.
“I’ve seen young people on romantic dates where the most intimate relationship they’re having is with their phones—a guy and a girl sitting across a table, scrolling the entire time.” Young readers of her books, she revealed, have asked her what words like “courtship”, “wooing”, or “suitor” even mean. These were not jokes, she stressed, but genuine questions from people for whom such ideas no longer exist in lived experience.
The young, she insisted, are not disinterested in life—they are simply undernourished when it comes to nuance. “I’ve quoted Kalidasa extensively in the book. What can be more romantic than a lovelorn poet sending messages to his beloved through a cloud? When I say this to young people, they listen. No one has bothered to talk to them about these things.”
Violence, power and women
One of the most unsettling moments in the session came when De discussed a chapter from The Sensual Self that recounts a role-play fantasy between a married couple that ends in humiliation and violence—an incident narrated to her by the woman who endured it. The attempt to rekindle intimacy, De explained, collapsed into a display of male power, shaped by unspoken assumptions and fantasies borrowed from popular culture.
“She [The women who spoke to De] had rehearsed, because a lot of male fantasies revolve around Rekha’s character, Umrao Jaan,” De said. “Many women believe they can woo back a husband who is drifting away by recreating that fantasy.” Role-playing can backfire if both people are not in sync with one another and each other’s sensitivities, she added. “Without conversation, intimacy reduces to mechanics. “The most important four-letter word is ‘talk’.”
She then posed a harder question: “Most women have been taught the power of silence. How do we change that? How do we make desire something that can actually be discussed?” Power and intimacy, De noted, are deeply embedded in cultural rituals like the suhag raat, endlessly romanticised in Bollywood. “For a lot of young brides, it’s the worst night of their lives,” she said. “No one prepares them for what to expect. It’s associated with pain and brutality. But they’re told a bride must be ‘pure’.”
Little has changed, she added, recalling families who still advise daughters to remain pavitra—a word rarely examined beyond virginity—and to keep their husbands happy, regardless of consent or comfort.
Desire and ageing
As the session drew to a close, the conversation turned to ageing. De, now 78, has explored ageing candidly in her writing, particularly in 70… and to Hell With It! (Penguin) and in the new book. “There’s no age limit on desire. There’s no such thing as absence of desire,” she said.
Society’s discomfort with older people harbouring desire, she argued, reveals more about social fear than biological reality. While bodies change, the need for pleasure, connection, and imagination does not. “To deny that,” she said, “is to deny a fundamental part of being alive.”
In a powerful closing moment, De spoke about her own life. Her husband is 86. She is 78. They see each other, acknowledge each other, touch gently, and exist for one another. Desire, she reminded the audience, does not vanish—it transforms. A look, a caress, a presence can be as intimate as anything else.
“Society wants old people to disappear,” she said. “Hell no.”