Review By Harsimran Kaur
Shashi Tharoor is like an incandescent flame holding tightly to the paraffin structure of the candle whose flammable ambit is widespread to give hell to the heavens, pompously cladded in a solipsism dystopia. He is a master story-teller; his each piece of writing is a story of unbound reflections, paraphernalia of tendentious obscurities, piquant humour and a sledge hammer toying with the idea of vulnerability.
His capacity to throng the wall with a formidable fist bringing down the submerged cemented particles to reveal their true identity gets very close to the anarchist melody of prejudices and profligacy sung by some mean-trodden netas and protracted regimes. His books “The Great Indian Novel” and “Why I am a Hindu” is a cornucopia of profound wisdom. Another stark wolf to the flock is his latest book, “Pride, Prejudice and Punditry” – an agglomeration of selected articles, columns, short stories and the invaluable experience so eloquently detailed by the great Maestro.
A passionate and reverent Hindu, Shashi Tharoor, benignly prostrates to the values and beliefs that make Hinduism a legacy for the progeny. His books “Why I am a Hindu” and “The Hindu Way” offered a smorgasbord of parables adumbrating mythological invincibility. Though all this might sound repetitive in his latest book, the stories still have a profound impact on the sensibility of the human mind.
When I read his book “Nehru” it not only expatiated Nehru’s philosophy and idiosyncratic enchantments, but made me an aggressive “Tharoor” fan. His obliqueness to capture the nuances of individualistic perceptions—could be a blasphemous bigotry or a liberalized loudhailer; he covers all with an infallible confidence. His latest book gives credence to Nehru about his idea of secularism. His panegyric written articles on Nehruvian legacy are contemporaneous to the author’s discretion on nationalistic pride and belongingness, incoherently putting religion as a fractured thumb in the hierarchy of fingers.
The piece of writing that makes the spine fudge on a high-low paroxysm is from his fiction collection, “Charlis & I” and “Living through 1984” – poignant to the core reflecting the megalomaniac punctured society and its repugnant aberrations.
He talks about his love for cricket and writing that form a rigorous pursuance of his passion even today. A writer par-excellence, his projection of life in politics, cricket, his invaluable professional journey at the United Nations, writing arena and world of books manifest in his articles and columns, giving rare insights to how the dynamics of each spectrum works.
TAKE AWAY
Shashi Tharoor is an enigma! There is more to him than his “THAROOROSAURUS.” His repertoire of words holds an irrefutable charm and so does is assemblage of opinions and debates. He gives his readers a pursuance to introspect avoiding any invidious polemics.
Every article in the book is a reflection of an attitude—Nehru’s philosophy of “one nation” devoid of religious reprisals to Tagore’s political nuances and discreet prose, Ambedkar’s indiscriminatory pursuance to Gandhi’s metaphor of non-violence. Tharoor’s obvious inclination is to streamline what seems discordant due to hubristic pride of pompous politicians, prejudice proffered through puritanical palimpsest and the punditry pigging on what seems a penchant.
Abundance of knowledge and wisdom to grasp!!