Riot - A Love Story: Shashi Tharoor

An excerpt-y, opinionated, reflective and other synonym-y book post.

(Published in the Indian sub-continent as Riot- A Novel)

Disclaimer: This is also a breakaway from the typical or not so typical book reviews or reading guides or the groups of words strung together that you’d find in this blog. This post is written in a bulleted-list kind-of-way, and you can jump to any part. The parts in italics and quotes are directly taken from the book and are ©Arcade Publishing, Penguin India and the author.

Paperback Cover; Source: Flipkart

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//The first time I saw him I didn’t really like him.

And I was soon happy I was stuck. There was something about his voice that reached out and drew me in, something that was both inviting and reassuring. I heard his voice, and the only thing I could care about was hearing that voice again.

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 // “I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that usefulness the last refuge of the unappealing. But even a man of his proclivities would have to agree that the last adjective doesn’t apply to you.”

So help me God, I blushed.

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*//A short and umpteen display of wit when the Hero or the guy in this love story talks about his dreams or rather supressed dreams which he wants to fulfil at some point of his life.

He dreams of writing a novel. A novel - that doesn’t read like a novel. He wants to do it differently.

When the significant other of the love story, or rather the subject matter of the story asks if he means that he would write an epic. Lakshman our suave hero replies shortly, “No,” “Someone’s done that already. I’ve read about this chap who’s just reinvented the Mahabharata as a twentieth-century story --- epic style, oral traditions, narrative digressions, the lot. No, what I mean is, why can’t I write a novel that reads like --- like an encyclopaedia?”

To know more about the so-mentioned chap and his epic- Click here. And about the encyclopaedia-styled novel, well you would get to know as and when you read this book. To shortly put it, Never-Have-I-Ever came across any such novel where essentially you can turn to any page and read, go back and start a thread or go forward and read or go on to read as you’d normally read a book from the beginning to the end (Yes! I know Manga’s go the other way round) and then realise that you could essentially read this novel/novel like encyclopaedia as described after you’ve read that conversation where our Hero’s dream book is essentially in your hands.

Well, me believes you can read this blog post the same way. ;)

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//Another aspect of communalism and essentially riots that the title talks about is the still not resolved Ram-Janambhoomi and Babri Masjid case. There is this very pertinent question or rather a rhetorical question still very contemporary in 2017 and maybe will remain even in 2084, which goes something like this, “If the Muslims of 1520s acted out of ignorance and fanaticism, should the Hindus act the same way in the 1980s?”

What about the Hindus of 2018? Or 2020- The Year which we were supposed to be living in a developed nation. I suppose even developed nations have their fair share of problems, who knows, Orwell’s 1984 though didn’t happen, The-Man-With-The-Tiny-Hands’ 2084 may happen.

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 //About religious chauvinism, intolerance (not the post 2014-kind, this book was published in 2001), the following is a mindful excerpt-

The chauvinists which I mind you, today numbers in astronomical quantities of one of the oldest faiths of the world……

Mr Gupta is speaking of Hinduism as a label of Human identity, not a set of humane beliefs; he’s proud of being a Hindu as if it were a team he belongs to. Defining a “Hindu” cause may partly be a political reaction to the definition of NON-HINDU causes, but it is a foolish one for all that.

Those who feel themselves supplanted in this competition of identities, who think that they are taking their country back from the usurpers of long ago. They want revenge against history, but they do not realize that history is its own revenge.

Also, a P.S to this entry; I have not yet read “WHY I AM A HINDU” , so any similar ideas expressed or not, I have no knowledge of, neither do is this post.

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// But here -- the same riot, the same offenses, the same sections of the penal code – how can there be two such openly different standards for people of two communities? It is a question of the faith of a whole community on the system of justice in our country.” We do our job Randy. I just wish everyone would do theirs as well.

The bigots who spearhead it want to reinvent the past….And at a fundamental level, intolerance is the real enemy; intolerance can always shift targets.  You know what happened with Hitler. As the German theologian Pastor Martin Niemoeller put it:

“First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out— 
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out - 
because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

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 //Ever since that day I have been haunted by the thought of little Navjyot … … I imagine his father trying to reassure him, calmly locking the damned doors, and I imagine his little face pressed to the window, staring in disbelief as the flames consumed him, flames set by the mob. They must have tried to escape, my brother-in-law would have preferred to face the mob than to burn to death, but the locks on the door must have fused together with the heat of the blaze, and they remained trapped inside, asphyxiating, burning, choking to death.

These words are enough to send shivers down the spines of anyone, and to think that such a horror pervaded through the entire country should be enough to calm down all of the blood-raged people over the country fighting in the name of their fate, not rioting, I will rather prefer calling it murdering people, cold blooded murder, taking the life of another human being. As much as I would like to console myself that this doesn’t happen, this brutality is fiction. No, it’s not. People are capable of doing this to people, hear it from a 19 year old what you’d call a pessimist looking at bleak things in our great country or hear it from Adiga or Tharoor. This exists and goes on in our country from time to time, yes even now, and as much as I don’t want it to, this will continue in the future. 

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// “If I brought 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.”

Well I am not asking of the whole world, but why, only why a small minority does act this way. Have I failed myself?

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//Truth, Wilde wrote, is just “one’s last mood.” Is this mood of tormented despair the one truth that counts now?

Speaking of Riot: A Love Story, go on read it, you will love it, I think. J

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//Except, perhaps the terms India believes in: Destiny. Fate. Karma.

Hardcover Edition Book Cover; Source:Booktopia

P.S- Any suggestions, reviews, your point of view or criticism is welcome in the comments below and will be held in regard. You can also mail me at hrishikeshkayshap@gmail.com

Adios!