Riot.. by Shashi Tharoor

Rating: ⭐️⭐️

I have always wanted to read Shashi Tharoor. The man has amazing vocabulary a result of being well read and an academic literary background. He is everything what people will call angrez chale Gaye par inko chod Gaye.

He reminds me of all the people who make fun of the Desi language and accents. The graduate of St Stephens or other snobby elite Anglophile schools. I particularly like how he uses the English language to put the English people in their place. 

Despite despising all this I still wanted to read him. It just proved again that just because you read, speak and write good English it doesn’t mean you are a good storyteller. That is an art that is not gained by only the mastery of the language. 

I appreciate the creative construct stringed together as a collection of diary writings, news paper articles, interviews, transcripts, letters, and journalism tid bits by various characters. The pit fall of this approach is the use of many voices and hence a possibility of conflicting opinions or views basis each vantage point. However each voice sounds the same here as if all of them have the same view or understands others inherently. It was too obvious that author was trying too hard to present multiple views but they all seemed pretend and similar. Instead it would have been better to have an earnest and single narrator. 

There were no brilliant lines, a disappointment from Tharoor. However it only affirms that his is a borrowed genius as are his lines. But it’s a good thing that Mr Wilde comes to his rescue as to his protagonist most of the times. So let me share some of the wise words of Wilde only: 

Like Wilde I’ve put my genius into my like and merely my talent into my writing. 

But as Wilde would have said, is hypocrisy such a terrible thing? It’s merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.  

Everyone should keep a diary, preferably somebody else’s. - Oscar Wilde 

Hypocrisy being just a way of multiplying your personalities. 

Crude yet true way of speaking amongst the boys club of Civil services or politics - The mood was uglier than a Hijra’s crotch. 

They want revenge against history, but they do not realise that history is its own revenge. 

Someone pitch to do a phd on the role of Islam in the sanctification of Rama, but I wouldn’t take a life insurance policy out on him these days. 

And at fundamental level, intolerance is the real enemy; intolerance can always shift targets. 

If I bought you up to believe everything would be easy, that the whole world would act with integrity and honesty and decency and fairness, then i have failed you. You can only be true to yourself. 

We live between oblivion and memory. - Octavio Paz