Own languageWhen I was asked to write a column for the Express, I was both excited and tearful. Fearful to the point where I did nothing about it for months. When, finally, I was pushed into doing something about it, I sat down to pen my thoughts. For someone who can argue up a storm, I was curiously bereft of words.At a loss for ideas, I picked up a phone and started to call people at random, people from differing backgrounds, work spheres, of varying degrees of intelligence and awareness, to embark on a personal discovery of what it is that a reader wants from a column or columnist. I landed up with opinions that ranged from cute, funny to sometimes caustic. Some new insights, some familiar, some truly strange too.The vast array was very interesting to me. But, unfortunately, not to the Express. They canned the resultant article which I proudly presented as my first column! So, I embarked yet again into a journey, this time into myself to find personal opinions that would gainacceptance to this column. But that is another story.So, back to my spot-poll. What came out extremely strongly were a couple of interlinked things. A leading film-maker, a housewife and a stockbroker, amongst others, said that knowing something about the columnist was important to them. Being familiar with the writer's background helped them put the opinion in perspective. Several said that the photograph of the columnist was important too.There was one columnist who popped into the conversation, unprompted, unfailingly. Some professed to love her. Others advised me never to write like her. I was amused because even those that claimed to dislike her work, were obviously reading her stuff pretty regularly!No guesses required, it is Shobha De, of course. The Diva of columnists. Collating my poll results, it did come to mind - and that apart from the lady's terrific ability to express herself in words - is part of her success due to the fact that we know so much about her? Model, Stardusteditor, fiction writer of bestsellers, married twice, mother to six kids, Shobha Rajadhyaksh-Khilachand-De.And now for all those insatiable De'ites, comes her 500-page autobiography. I am dying to dig my teeth into it. I haven't yet. But I did look at the pix. What struck me was that she was amazingly, consistently lovely even as a child, and then right through till today. Gawd, did she never go through the gawky stages?Yes, I am an unabashed admirer, though I will confess I haven't liked most of her fiction. But will concede that it sort of creates a new genre in popular Indian fiction. It has a power similarly seductive to the genre of mainstream Indian cinema, a language of its own.More power to this feisty lady, who re-invents herself with a regularity which is an embarrassing lesson to most of us!Full CircleWhat is art? How do you define it? What is artistic to me may be trash to you. Is it art in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps we can all agree that art is all about having anoriginal idea. The idea.Except that some ideas blow one's mind! Jennifer Ringley of USA has put a camera in her bedroom. The camera is on 24 hours of the day, covering her movements as she goes about her daily routine. It even catches her sleeping. By the way, there is no lewd or sexual stuff going on here. The coverage transmits live on her personal website. Which, incidentally, has the highest number of hits on APC's website.Now, why would someone want to visit a site and watch a woman go about her humdrum, daily existence? What about the lady herself? Is she an incredible exhibitionist or does she have a brilliant understanding of the fundas of voyeurism? Or, is this the ultimate in performance art?Andy Warhol once made a film, Sleep. A fixed camera shot a man while he slept. It ran eight hours, real time. And now there's The Truman Show. A film about a man whose entire life in a 24-hour TV show, broadcasting live. Only he doesn't know it. So, is art imitating life?AnuradhaTandon is a script writer and ad film-maker
