New Delhi: Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor has a bug for writing. And he says the great George Bernard Shaw would understand this bug. After all, Shaw had said: ‘I write for the same reason a cow gives milk’. “You know it’s inside me; it’s got to come out,” Tharoor said.
And he has written 27 books. At the launch of his 27th book, ‘A Wonderland of Words’, published by Aleph Book Company, Tharoor regaled a packed hall with stories about his great love with words.
“His love affair with words is on full display,” said author-publisher David Davidar about Tharoor’s latest book as he began the conversation with the MP about his childhood, book, and journey as an author.
As a child, Tharoor played a word game with his father, while his first story was published in a magazine when he was just 10. Later, during his early days at the United Nations, he sought a “licence to write” just like James Bond had a “licence to kill”. Over six decades later, Tharoor’s tryst with words continues; his latest book consists of 101 essays, all based on words.
Working as a staff member with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1978, Tharoor sought a formal permission for writing. He made a case with the chief of personnel and asked that if people could play cricket or collect butterflies or stamps, then why couldn’t he write.
“So, I was told yes, you can be given permission to write, provided you don’t offend any member states. That was the only condition. So, I got that permission,” said the 68-year-old Congress leader.
He narrated the anecdote among many others during an hour-long session at the Prime Ministers Museum and Library, in New Delhi’s Teen Murthi Bhavan.
Tharoor, a word enthusiast, developed the habit of writing and reading early on and got published in many Indian magazines and newspapers in his early years.
After writing some renowned books, including ‘Reasons of State’, ‘The Great Indian Novel’, and ‘India: From Midnight to the Millennium’, his latest book explores “words, concepts, and particularities that constitute the sublime wonderland of the English language”.
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‘Words are my instruments’
During the book launch, Tharoor narrated two excerpts from his book. The packed hall included people of various age groups; they quietly listened to Tharoor reading out complex and new words, almost as a reminder of an English teacher who leaves the class awestruck with his reading style.
One of the excerpts that cracked up the hall was called ‘Indianism’, a chapter based on the Indian way of speaking English, where the sentence formation is different with words and sentences used incorrectly. He also narrated a paragraph about Indians’ use of English being distinctive but not necessarily incorrect.
“Some Indian Englishisms are merely translated from an Indian language: ‘What is your good name?’ is the classic, since all Bengalis, for instance, have a ‘daak naam’ that they are called by, and a ‘bhalo naam’ (or ‘good name’) for the record. But ‘what is your good name?’ is still the most polite form, in any Indian version of the English language, for finding out the identity of your interlocutor,” said Tharoor.
‘‘Is he your real brother?’ someone asks, not to accuse you of having imaginary siblings, but to differentiate this brother from a cousin, who is also referred to as a ‘brother’ by affectionate Indians,” he added.
Tharoor said that he has a cliched reputation of an “etymological egghead” and an MP who is more concerned about words than anything else. However, he insisted, “I’m only concerned with words because they’re my instruments”.
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Thinking, writing, speaking
Highlighting the major selling point of his book, Tharoor said many people can benefit from it because it takes an entertaining approach to teach them about the importance of words and language and how they shape ideas and make thinking clear and thoughtful.
“One of the things my father made clear to me was that words matter, principally because of the ideas they contain. Your thoughts are incubators until you put them into words, any language,” he noted.
During the conversation, Tharoor noted that his favourite four-letter word is ‘read’ and said that people need to have the capacity to either absorb, deflect, or reflect on the language being thrust on them. “You need language back to express your own agreement or disagreement,” he said.
Toward the end of the conversation, Tharoor interacted with the audience who asked him questions regarding English writing, reading, and language in general, including questions about onomatopoeias in different languages, ways of making people read, coming up with topics for writing, and his “peculiar” accent.
Tharoor responded to every question with patience and ended the interaction with a suggestion: “The way we write is how we think and talk, and the way we speak is who we are… Moreover, read. Read without deadlines because they take away the joy.”
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)