Zee JLF 2018 | I changed a repressive stereotype, says Bridget Jones creator

The Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (ZeeJLF) welcomed Helen Fielding, the creator of the iconic Bridget Jones, on Saturday. And the thousands who thronged to Diggi Palace was a testimony to how Indians, especially young women, can't have enough of Bridget – the giddy British woman, obsessed with her weight, men, and sex (or lack of it).

"If I'd known so many people would read it, I wouldn't have dared write it," said Fielding. She had the audience in splits when she read out a fan letter to the editor of The Independent, the British newspaper where the Bridget Jones column made its debut: "Dear Sir, I'd like to shag Bridget Jones. Could you let me have her phone number please?".

Asked whether the rules of dating – 'Don't text while drunk', being number one — had changed much in the 21 years since the first Bridget book came out, Fielding said, "technology makes it [the rules] more complex. Meeting in person, even telephoning, are not things youngsters do these days."

On a serious note, she spoke about how Bridget was an exercise in taking on the "repressive stereotype" of the 30-something spinster as something embarrassing and giving her an identity, and a story, and changing society's perception of her.

Fielding spoke of an earlier visit she'd made to India, as a hippie in her 30s, giggling at the cows on the roads, riding a camel in Jaisalmer, and being surprised in her room one night by a man in a turban who rushed out again saying "I'm sorry".