Standfirst: Shashi Tharoor is an accomplished storyteller who delivers didactic prose in a hugely entertaining package
Shashi Tharoor must surely be the Indian subcontinent’s foremost master of satire. I swear, no other writer has given me as much insight into India’s politics and social fabric while making me laugh so hard.

One of the finest novelists to come forth from the crop of new Indian writers who are taking the world by storm, Tharoor is also a high-profile diplomat with the United Nations. Born in London in 1956, Tharoor was educated in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and the United States. He obtained a BA in History from the elite St Stephen’s College and, at 22, was the youngest to get a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

He has worked with the UN since May 1978, serving for more than 11 years with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, whose Singapore office he headed during the “boat crisis”. In January 1997, he was appointed executive assistant to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and now serves as the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information.

Most of his writing has been about India. He says intellectually, he is excited by what India stands for.

“I feel various parts of India coursing through my veins,” he says, and this is very much evident in his work. While harbouring no illusions about his country, he has a deep understanding and love for it and in his own words, writes of an India of “multiple truths and multiple realities, an India that is greater than the sum of its parts”.

In an interview with The Week (India) in September last year, the writer made a telling statement about his work: “I want to write things that provoke people to think and interrogate themselves.”

The thing that makes Tharoor’s novels special is the brilliant way in which he delivers his didactic prose in a hugely entertaining package. He believes that in order to instruct, he has to distract and he has succeeded in producing masterpieces of satire that have readers rolling in laughter even as they reel at the wealth of meaning contained in his prose.

He lives in New York now, but frequent visits back to his ancestral home in Palaklad, Kerala help him keep in touch with his roots and ensure he doesn’t write “as an expatriate”. Asked what unique Indian perspective he has contributed as a writer, he says he draws his inspiration from the word “novel” itself, which “implies and obligation to do something new each time”. As such, he adds that he has not only tried to experiment with the tales he has told, but also with the manner of telling of these tales in his three novels –The Great Indian Novel, Show Business and Riot.

His maiden work of fiction, The Great Indian Novel, catapulted him to fame when it was published in 1989. In the novel, he fastens fiction to politics and myth to reality in a masterful way that vastly entertains, yet broadens the reader’s understanding of India’s political culture and history. He weaves the very real and colourful history of 20th century Indian politics with that great Hindu epic The Mahabharata in a delightfully suspect tone that leaves you gasping at his boldness. He blends poetry and prose in an experimental style that helps him shift from serious and sublime moods to the highly ridiculous.

Tharoor pokes fun at both the British and Indians in the novel – nobody is above comment, and you’ll have no problem identifying the characters he parodies from the era of India’s independence struggle and the partition of Pakistan. At the same time, you will learn profound, poignant lessons about the Indian experience that can be applied to people and nations across the globe.

There’s one thing about reading The Great Indian Novel, however, that you have to remember – you need to suspend disbelief and remember that it’s a parody. There is no real line between myth and reality – the whole novel is like a rich tapestry with the reality of Indian politics and history woven together with the epic, mythical threads of The Mahabaratha. Read between the (often) hilarious lines, and the messages will speak to you.

Tharoor’s next effort, Show Business, is equally entertaining, and was actually the first of his books that I read. Here, he uses the Bombay movie industry as a metaphor to explore aspects of the Indian condition. The story itself is told like a movie, with a “hero” - Ashok Banjara, a typical Bollywood megastar who chases actresses, bashes up villains, enters politics – you get the picture - and his “co-stars” (his wife, mistress, family members and colleagues). Tharoor tracks the actor’s fortunes and pecadillos through series of first-person narratives by the star himself and through the thoughts and views of the “supporting cast”.

While the life of Ashok Banjara itself is a hugely diverting tale, the genius of Show Business lies in the multi-layered comparison of the shallow fantasy world of Bollywood with the social crises of the real India. The book itself parodies a Bollywood movie in that it contains strong messages on the values, or lack thereof, that prevail in the modern India while offering your money’s worth of razzle-dazzle glamour and drama.

The latest of Tharoor’s novels that I’ve read is Riot, which chronicles the mystery surrounding the death of an American Social worker in the Indian town of Zalilgarh during a riot through the contradictory accounts of several characters who knew her.

In terms of prose, I found this to be the most experimental of his novels. Tharoor uses several different styles, ranging from poetry, report writing, letters, newspaper articles, radio scripts, interview transcripts and journal extracts, all of which serve to lend an air of authenticity to the narrative. I have not seen this done with such variety before and it adds versatility to the story, doling the narrative in bite-sized chunks that make it a joy to read.

Riot is a potent social commentary of India, yet it is also a poignant tale of love and betrayal that’s told in a wonderfully unconventional way. It’s somewhat less allegorical than his previous novels, and therefore less subtle in its message, but true to his word, Tharoor has fulfilled his commitment to “do something new each time”.

I found the messages contained in Riot to be the most relevant to me as a Malaysian. In one of the “transcripts” of an interview with a member of India’s Muslim minority, for example, Tharoor writes: “Minorityhood is a state of mind. It is a sense of powerlessness, of being out of the mainstream, of being here on sufferance. I refuse to let others define me that way. I tell my fellow Muslims: No one can make you a minority without your consent.” Tharoor’s love for his native land is evident in the following cry, which could become a statement for each and everyone of us, no matter how disillusioned we are about our country.

“… I love this country. I love it not just because I was born here, as my father and mother were, as their parents before them were, not just because their graves have mingled their bones into the soil of this land. I love it because I know it, I have studied its history, I have travelled its geography, I have breathed its polluted air, I have written words to its music. India shaped me, my mind, my tastes, my friendships, my passions …”

Riot was written at a difficult time in Tharoor’s life and perhaps this influenced the mood of Riot, which is more sombre than his other novels. Still, I had a whale of a time reading it, and alternated between deep contemplation and shouts of laughter – something to be expected from reading a Tharoor novel.