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Master of all trades
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With a new book on the shelf, Shashi Tharoor discloses past secrets, present projects and fond hopes
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Photo: R.V. Moorthy
As busy as ever Shashi Tharoor
He started writing as an asthmatic child at the age of eleven. He is the popular columnist and acclaimed author of 10 books, both fiction and non-fiction. Even today, he is working “25 hours a day and eight days a week”. Using his celebri
ty and intellectual status, he is busy “doing good and doing well at the same time.” He can only be Shashi Tharoor, the Indian face of diplomacy.
His latest Penguin publication, “The Elephant, the Tiger & the Cellphone” was recently released by Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Vice-President of India.
The book is a compilation of Tharoor’s newspaper columns along with the people and experiences that make India. Seen as a continuation of his previous work, “From Midnight to the Millennium”, it explains why this country can be spoken of only in the plural. Written in the form of essays, it is like a recipe book. Each essay provides the complete ingredients and methods that go into making the buffet that India is.
Tharoor recounts how he once asked a British person, “What is Britishness?”
“Cricket, Shakespeare and BBC,” came the immediate answer. Intrigued by this, Tharoor began penning down, “What is India?” The result is his A to Z glossary of Indianness.
While the “idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts”, the author explains that there is often a need to explain our unity over our diversity. “The strength of India lies in that we can be many things at one time,” Tharoor says in his clipped accent.
Training graduates
Many things is what Tharoor is; entrepreneur, businessman, patron, supporter, trustee, to name a few. He is soon to start a training centre for graduates in the Trivandrum Techno Park. Indian graduates, he finds, are great in maths and finance, but lack proper presentation skills. He is also looking to start a nursing college, attached to a government hospital. He is giving his support to causes he feels for, like slum kids, the Tiger Foundation and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Amidst this frenzy of activity he believes, “I feel for my own sanity I have to go back to fiction. I have twice started and abandoned novels. With fiction, you have to create a space in your head, populate it with characters and fill it with memories. It’s not like non-fiction, which you can start and finish. It is more vulnerable to interruptions.” With no definite plans, he says with a smile, “I promise to give it a try.”
Keeping promises
Tharoor seems good at keeping promises. “In my preposterous childhood I decided I’d read a book a day. I did cheat by often choosing the thinnest book. But by Christmas, I had a list of 365 books read,” he admits, embarrassed at his own triumph. He recounts fondly how his earliest writing was largely derivative. He wrote “The Six Solvers”, a take-off from Enid Blyton’s detective novels. His first story published was based on the American Civil War. Rolling back the memories, he discloses that his most “fulfilling” years at the UN were 1981-84, stationed in Singapore and working for the boat people. A Vietnamese family was found drifting on the South China Sea. With no food or water, the parents had cut their finger to feed their children.
By “busting every rule in the book”, he ensured that the family was rescued and rehabilitated. “Those days, I could put my head to the pillow, knowing I’d made a real difference,” he confesses.
NANDINI NAIR
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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