Daily Times

Book Review: Riot: A Novel

Authors: Shashi Tharoor

Publisher: Penguin, New Delhi, India; 2001

“The secret of great stories is that they have no secrets. Great stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again…They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen…You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t…In great stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love and who doesn’t; yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic” — Arundhati Roy.

Once in years, one reads a story that stirs emotions lying dormant for what seems like eons. The story, simple, almost stark, gleams plainly confident in its contextual strength, of contents that are so commonplace, so real they leap off the pages emboldened by the extraordinariness of their being situated in that particular scene of that unwieldy book called life. The characters, each cloaked in layered individuality, speak of unique dilemmas in such bare terms that it becomes a collective narrative of all others like him/her — of race, of nation, of religion, of skin colour, of life playing games. The multi-chronicled different faiths being used as instruments of division, of hatred, of death connect to the hands of those with inscrutable visages, who do things that turn lives upside down, irreversibly. The story opens darkly, like ominous thunder on an inky night in a deserted island, and one turns pages quietly, dreading what will happen to that lovely woman, with her bluer-than-the-ocean eyes, and the love for a man she loves like no one else. The story of a woman who loves the right man at the wrong time, in the right place at the wrong time of history. Interwoven with religious mantras that become the raison d’etre to kill, uneasy in the complexity of their stances, yet smooth as melted Häagen-Dazs mint ice-cream, join to form the breathtakingly-structured novel called Riot, and the story becomes one of those great stories you have heard, and want to hear again. And again.

Riot written by the international diplomat-turned-politician-cum-writer Dr Shashi Tharoor is one of those unassuming books one picks up absentmindedly, then sits up and goes whoa…Riot is that good. It is simply one of those books that takes one’s breath away, and one rues not having read it all these years. This is not a review of a much-read, 13-year-old book, eulogised by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and The Independent; this is simply my way of celebrating one of the best books I have ever read, the response to which could be one word: wow.

Dr Tharoor, writer of 12 other books, including the brilliant, wickedly smart, the Mahabharata-meets-Indian-history The Great Indian Novel (mandatory reading in several courses on post-colonial literature); a satirical comment on the self-righteous profundity of Bollywood in Show Business, and The Five Dollar Smile, a collection of stories so delightfully-varied in the response they elicit it is hard to imagine one person penning them. Recipient of several awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, named to India’s highest honour for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2004, the Pride of India Award from the Zakir Husain Memorial Foundation, Tharoor stands out as one of the most prolific and brilliant writers in recent times, his latest Pax Indica garnering tremendous response globally.

The most significant aspect of Tharoor’s prose to me is the sheer simplicity of his writing. There are no literary gimmicks, intellectual webs to confuse, word-trickery that gloats see-how-smart-I-am, insertion of stylistic flourishes. As one opens any of Tharoor’s books, there is a sense of the writer speaking to one directly, slipping a hand into one’s, gently guiding into a world that is deeply personal yet intricately objective; characters role-playing, juxtaposing inner conflicts, clamouring to appear serene; and narratives so simple the simmering pain becomes that solitary tear that goes unnoticed by the person seated next to one, or the smile that lights up a 15×20 room with a 200-watt bulb. The imagery is startling in its effortless dedication to detail; the outer world speaks noisily, pole-balancing emotions that play peek-a-boo with one life or the other. There is playful, seductive interaction of thoughts and words, transposing a simple hit into that cover drive that immortalises a Ganguly into a Lara. There is intangible mastery of language employed so skillfully each page stands on its own, delighting with its intellectual references, hyphenated by glimpses-of-history, glamourised by contemporary bon mots and indented with the quiet confidence of that genius of a painter whose simple brushstrokes create work that is not just ooh-ahhed at but loved. As one smiles/gasps/aches while reading, it is as if one sees the writer typing in some semi-darkened room when he wrote those words: pouring a part of himself into creating that world, embellished with his experiences, his response, his imagination. And that he loves to write. He writes because it makes him happy, not in that whooping-with-joy way, but a quiet, inward emotion that seems to say: I love words. And the power of what they can do.

Set against the backdrop of India in 1989 when the Babri Masjid, said to be built on the Janambhoomi of the Indian god Ram in Ayodhya, became a pretext to incite, to kill, to establish the supremacy of Hinduism in Hindu-majority India, Riot is Tharoor’s masterful, straightforward attempt to comprehend how personal faith became the tool to shatter the patina of unity of a nation into smithereens of hatred. Riots broke. People were stabbed, shot, lynched, knifed. Ayodhya, the religious site, became a black cesspool of blood, being spilled by many chanting “Jo Janambhoomi ke kaam na aaye/Woh bekaar jawani hai.” Seen through the eyes of a Hindu fundamentalist, a Muslim scholar, an enlightened, secular Hindu government servant, and a proud Sikh police officer, Riot looks at the historical context of narratives, politicised down the ages, abused for exploitative purposes, and playing upon people’s emotional bonds to divine faith. It is also about Sikhs rebelling against the state, being attacked, killing Mrs Indira Gandhi and the innumerable butchered in revenge. How Hinduism, the religion receptive to all viewpoints, has been contorted into an instrument of narrow-minded bigotry to alienate others, marking them as outsiders. This is the thread that permeates the entire narrative of Riot, which seems to be Tharoor’s introspective, very thoroughly-chronicled understanding of history, to make sense of what bloodied India in the lead-up to the Ayodhya riots that tragic 1989.

Riot is India as seen by 13 characters, each speaking markedly, trying to decipher the chaos. Tharoor’s use of different, distinctive narrative styles for the different voices of its characters’ contending narratives is the USP of Riot’s literary construction, each voice unique, while maintaining interconnection through a common thematic thread. Brilliantly crafted, the story is told by characters in monologues, in letters, in their minds, in their pained hearts.

Riot is the India of Hindus, of Muslims, of Sikhs, and of all others who co-exist in peace until they don’t. It is the India that is of Hindus, of Muslims who came from other places to make it their own, of Sikhs who feel like outsiders in their homeland. It is jostling narratives of Hinduism/Islam/Sikhism, my-god-is-bigger-than-your-god, and who has the right to ‘own’ India. It is those millions who live together, complacently different, yet in sync with one other. It is about those few who for varied purposes use religions that unite to create blood-lined schisms that rot into battles, delineating the saffron from the green, razing mosques to build temples, turning neighbours into bomb-carrying maniacs, throat-slitting strangers.

Riot is the India capitalistic foreigners try to cola-conquer, only to give up making way for Campa-colas. It is India that some foreigners see for what is — regal, ancient, proud, palace/history-lined; over-populated, noisy, poverty/beggars/sewers-riddled, growing exponentially, secular in its identity, yet deeply religious. It is India some see as what it is: people existing ordinarily, in the backdrop of hugely different culture/language/history/perspectives, one day at a time, one life at a time. It is India some foreigners fall in love with, only to discover nothing but heartache there.

Riot is also the love-story of an American woman, Priscilla, and an Indian man, Lakshman. It is Priscilla’s story of her uneasy relationship with her father, and Lakshman’s arranged life with his wife he doesn’t love and a child he can’t live without. It is Priscilla’s story of feeling deeply for the lives of women she tries to improve through her work, and Lakhshman’s devotion to his obligations. It is her story of forming bonds, and his dilemma of how to sever the ones he has. It is her story of falling in love with an ‘overworked/overweight/married’ man, and his with a woman who gets his soul but not the complexity of his existence. It is her story of creating her own little space in a chaotic world where life zooms in on just two people, and his where he writes poetry, outlining arabesques on her being. It is her story of that extraordinary love that takes her breath away, and his where he learns to breathe without her. It is their story that is so primal yet so complex, so marked with the impossible, so beautiful with “…her each breath a whis