Dr. Shashi Tharoor is a diplomat, author and journalist. He was the former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. He is now the chairman of Dubai-based Afras Ventures.

What does spirituality mean to you?
It is the acknowledgment of forces larger than myself. They are not immediately graspable by the daily concerns of one’s consciousness. But they reflect yearnings for things beyond oneself as well as the reality that transcends the mundane, daily life. The awareness of those forces is not something rational. It is an act of conviction, an instinctive feeling I have almost always had in my life.

Do you believe you are guided and protected by a superior force?
I have felt many times in irrational ways the presence of a guiding hand, especially and more strongly after the passing away of my father. Could it simply be explained by the psychology of bereavement, or the sense that I was no longer accountable only to myself, but also to his spirit? I am not sure, especially as this feeling has slightly faded away over the years — this happened fifteen years ago. The shock of losing him so young (he was only 63) and as I was so close to him may have something to do with it. It basically caused the deepest pain and deepest soul searching of my life. I had a sense of regret since I could never talk to him again. And the most consoling thing I realized was: when you are physically far away from someone you love, you know you can be in touch through the occasional phone, letter, or travel. Yet, when they have left this world, they are always with you. In some ways, I took that in very deeply. I was very conscious of my father’s good wishes when he was alive, but they became a permanent feature of myself for many years after his passing away, I was very conscious of his presence.

I also believe that the world poses more questions than science and rationality could ever answer. There are too many examples of paranormal phenomena for instance. But I do have a lot of scepticism when it comes to psychics, astrologers and other types of people professing an understanding of it all. When I was running for the Secretary General of the U.N. post for instance, I cannot tell you how many astrologers told me victory was assured. And of course it was not.

On the overall, the concept of the divine very much talks to me. It does so in the Upanishad sense of the word, as something ultimately unknowable by human beings. And with the idea that all worship, all prayers are means for human beings through their own imperfection to reach out to that they cannot touch. This is why it makes perfect sense to me that there may be 333,000 different manifestations of gods and goddesses. None is more accurate than the other since nobody has actually seen the face of God. We can only imagine It. So there is no harm in imagining God as a woman with five arms or a man on a cross. These are crotches for human’s imagination because they have difficulty fathoming the abstract, and praying to it.

Do you believe you have a special mission or purpose in this life?
I feel so very strongly. I have argued consistently that the only purpose of life is to leave this planet in a bit of a better state. If life was only about eating bread, why would that be — to survive? But then survive to do what? To eat more bread? It would make no sense. So to me, it is about enriching life and in turn, being enriched by it. That is why beyond finding material comfort, the arts, culture, the world of ideas are so important to me. And whatever I venture into, I really try to do my best. Even if it does not succeed, striving for it is what matters. Not trying would be the unforgivable thing.

As a child, one goes through different phases and desires. Before I was even ten years old, my grand-father told me I should become an IAS officer. He was living in a village in Kerala and those officers had an impact on the lives of millions. Then I thought I should have an impact on world affairs, so I wanted to be an IFS officer. But when it was time to sit for those exams, the government declared emergency. So I refused to go ahead with the exams, as I could not see myself serve a government capable of such a move.

Academia — as I had just completed my PhD, journalism — as I had been writing since I was a child — or international affairs were then the three options left. I ended up at the U.N. in Geneva, thinking I would spend there a year only. And of course, it lasted twenty-nine instead. I went from dealing with refugees — the Boat People crisis — to Peacekeeping Operations in Yugoslavia and then undersecretary general at the New York headquarters. The U.N. basically became the platform I was given as an Indian without resources, to have some sort of impact, to make a difference.

And when my candidacy to the post of Secretary General did not succeed in 2007, it was a huge, dramatic change in my life. I have learnt to accept it as what was meant to be. But I had embarked on that race with the goal of winning of course. And it was a real shock. I have tried since then to embrace the Hindu view about it — when you embark on a journey with a certain purpose and have an accident, it turns out the accident itself was the purpose. What is intended up there sometimes does not match the desire we have down here.
So as all that unfolded, I had no idea what I would do next. It was like rebooting a computer. A vast number of opportunities came to me and I entertained almost all of them since I was so unclear about what to do and be next.

Then I found this arrangement, an involvement in the private sector — something I had never done before — which would give me the necessary infrastructure (an assistant, an office…) and the freedom to pursue a wide range of interests. So even though I am no longer part of a large organization such as the U.N., I can still serve a number of purposes. I sit on the board of 33 institutions (maybe a bit too much!), in the fields of human rights, humanitarian action, culture, and education. And I find it all quite constructive and fulfilling. It is way too early to say what will come out of it all. All setbacks look pretty back when they happen and I lack the perspective to say what it was meant for. In the meantime, I must say it is a quite liberating experience, since it has freed me to pursue a number of things that otherwise I would have never done.

What is spirituality for you in your day to day life?
I am very conscious of the higher powers in my daily life. When I can, I pray. When I do not manage to pray in a formal way, I silently think of a superior power. I do so using a picture my parents used to have in their puja room, Ram and Sita surrounded by the main gods. Years later, I had found it in a book published by the former Greek ambassador in Delhi. And I always have it in my home-made altar, so I can imagine my worship through an illustration I have seen since I was a baby.

Source: Indian Express

What is your idea of happiness?

Happiness is a state of well-being that allows you to feel that your presence on this planet is worthwhile; that you’re happy to be alive, and that you’re looking forward to the next moment.

What is your greatest fear?

Losing a loved one.

Which historical figure do you identify the most with?

I don’t know if I can identify myself with any one figure. Rather, I’m inspired by someone such as Jawaharlal Nehru — he’s probably the person I would single out. I’ve been impressed and inspired by different figures of history such as Akbar, whom I admire for his syncretism and his remarkable ability to wield together such a large and far-flung empire in an era before easy communication.

Which living person do you most admire?

Kofi Annan. He’s someone who has worked his way up in a difficult and complicated international environment to become the first black Secretary General of the United Nations. He has extraordinary personal strength. I sometimes compare him to an Indian yogi because of his ability to be so deeply anchored that he does not allow himself to be swayed by either pressure or pleasure. One tends to admire people who are different from oneself.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

An anxiety to please. I’m sometimes far too inclined to give into demands upon me, whether it is my time, positions I need to take, attention to certain issues…

What is the trait you deplore in others?

Dishonesty. And not just financial dishonesty, but moral and intellectual dishonesty too.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Chocolates.

What is your favourite journey?

To my ancestral home, a more than 200-year-old house nestled in the foothills of the Western Ghats in Palakkad district. It’s where my grandmother lives. It’s an idyllic place surrounded by paddy fields, with coconut tress swaying in the breeze, extraordinarily pure air, and something much more intangible to do with the feeling of being at home.

Who is your favourite painter?

M.F. Husain.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Modesty. Too often the modesty professed by some tends to be immodesty disguised in a cloak of insincerity.

On what occasion do you lie?

Only to avoid hurting others. I’ve never lied in my life, and particularly not to people who matter to me, even when the truth may be unpalatable. But there are occasions when you feel that no useful purpose can be served by telling somebody exactly what you feel or exactly what others have said about them. And you tend to coat the truth in what was once called a white lie.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?

My increasingly undisciplined hair and my perpetually losing battle of the bulge.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

In English, I tend to be fairly even-handed in my choice of words. In Malayalam, though, I find myself using a number of phrases such as ‘ente manasil’ (in my mind), which is essentially kind of a filler for when you’re trying to figure out what to say.

What is your greatest regret?

The loss of my father. It was almost 18-and-a-half years ago but I still haven’t gotten over it. Probably, at some level I never will.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?

My wife Sunanda, who in so many ways has transformed my life, even though we met so much later than the stars intended us to.

When and where were you happiest?

The single moment was probably the birth of my twin sons Ishaan and Kanishk. But even that was such a lesson in life because it was tinged with fear as they were born eight weeks premature. Just seeing them for the first time, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an emotion like that. I was happy but not exhilarated because there was that underlying fear.

What is your present state of mind?

Stressed. That seem to be a congenital condition these days.

How would you like to die?

Ideally at peace after having lived a full life, and with the sense that there is nothing more I particularly wish to accomplish on the planet.

What is your favourite motto?

Never let yourself down. I’ve often felt that instead of people trying to achieve other people’s standards, the biggest and most valuable thing is to be the best that you can be.

Shashi Tharoor is a politician and a Member of Parliament from Thiruvanantha-puram. Before returning to his native Kerala, he was a career diplomat with the United Nations, where he rose to the level of Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information. Tharoor is also a prolific author and columnist, having written bestsellers such as “The Great Indian Novel”, “The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century”, and “Bookless in Baghdad”.

Source: The Hindu

Before delivering a talk on India in the 21st century, organised by Round Table India in association with The Telegraph on February 25, Shashi Tharoor (in picture) got talking with Metro on Calcutta, censorship and more. Excerpts.

You have an old connection with Calcutta. Do you like coming back here? Is there any particular place you visit?

I do enjoy many aspects of Calcutta but this time there’s one special thing. My batch in St. Xavier’s is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Well, it’s a few months late because we finished school in December 1971, but in those days the exam papers had to be shipped off to Cambridge so we got our results only in March or April 1972. We’re all gathering on a launch tomorrow (February 26) and it will cruise the Hooghly. That is something I’m particularly looking forward to on this trip.

Otherwise, I like seeing some of the changes. There’s a cliché that Calcutta never changes but the physical changes have actually been quite significant. I mean this hotel [ITC Sonar] didn’t exist when I was growing up; the Indian Museum has got such a wonderful scrub-down that you can see it’s a gorgeous white building! I see the city coming to life — a huge flyover over Lower Circular Road is another remarkable accomplishment. So I think there is progress, there are things coming up that make Calcutta like any other Indian city but there are things that are special about Calcutta, whether it’s College Street, Marble Palace or Victoria Memorial. I used to live near Victoria, I still have a fondness for it. The city is full of various kinds of charms. But usually it’s the people you remember, so rather than visiting sites, I tend to visit people.

You recently voiced your reservations about the government’s move to censor the Internet…

I spoke to Mr Sibal [IT minister Kapil Sibal] and he assured me that there was no such intention. However, there is a real problem with some of the very offensive material that is being posted on the Internet that would offend people’s religious sensibilities. In a country like ours, you can’t really afford to have things out there that could be used by people, including opportunistic politicians, to stir up trouble…. So, there are laws in the country against hate speech, inciting violence, communal hatred and so on… and those are the kind of laws we have to try and invoke. It’s not specifically Internet-directed. That is the understanding I have of what Mr Sibal was trying to do and when he spoke to me along those lines I had no difficulty accepting that.

I am fundamentally attached to the freedom of the press and I think the Internet is a part of that. I think that particularly issues involving art, literature and, of course, politics should be beyond government interference. I think if people say nasty things about politicians, we have to take it. I’ve had more than my fair share and I’ll say that at the end of the day you have to basically tell yourself that when you are in the kitchen, you’ve got to be prepared for the heat.

You had tweeted your disagreement with the judiciary too, on this issue … [On January 13, Tharoor had tweeted, “Wonder if courts aren’t going after the wrong target: Can phone companies be sued if someone sends a defamatory/obsceneSMS?]

I was just concerned to read about the Delhi high court trying to go after Internet service providers. If a newspaper publishes something bad, you would prosecute the newspaper, you wouldn’t prosecute the delivery boy. And the Internet service provider is like a delivery boy… I hope the Internet service provider will feel an obligation to cooperate with the government in tracking down the person who has deliberately put up hurtful matter on the Internet. But it makes no sense to prosecute them [service providers].

But isn’t there a thin line between what, as you say, a responsible government needs to keep an eye on, and censorship like in China?

But there’s a huge difference! China employs 40,000 people to do nothing but monitor the Internet to take down anything remotely critical of the Communist Party in China, the work of the government or whatever. If we ever went that way, I would be myself out on the streets protesting it.

Having worked abroad and now in India, is there anything that you miss?

Well, I try not to miss things! It’s foolish to look back in the sense of missing something because that means you are not wholly committed to what you are doing now. My horizons are now India. If I’m a Lok Sabha MP the challenges of my constituency have to be my priority. If we are looking at the kind of challenges you and I are talking about, I need to have my whole attention there than worry about that oh, in New York, it would’ve been different (laughs).

So you see yourself in the Indian political situation in say, the next 10 years or more?

Well, I’ve certainly come in with a tremendous commitment to try and contribute to the change and progress of our country. And I do believe I have been able to make a small contribution. As minister I did several things that hadn’t been done before… I’ve earned the respect of people in that ministry, including some who were rather sceptical when I came in… In Parliament also, I’ve been given the opportunity by my party to participate in some major debates, I led the Treasure Benches on the debate on foreign policy, when the BJP ruled a motion against our foreign policy, I’m proud of my performance there. I participated in a major way in the Lokpal Bill debate, in the black money debate… And if my party in its wisdom gives me a ticket again, I’m certainly keen on contesting….

Coming to your other avatar, the author, are you working on anything right now?

I am. I’m working on — well, struggling to work on because finding time is a challenge — a book on the place of India in the 21st century world. It’s a sort of foreign policy book but it’s not just foreign policy. It’s about things we need from the world and how we can relate to other countries to get them….

What about fiction? You haven’t written a novel since Riot in 2002…

I would love to but with fiction, you need not just time, which is scarce enough in my life, but you need a space in your head. A space to create an alternative universe, to populate it with characters, episodes, dialogue, etc, that are as real to you as the people you are meeting in real life. Non-fiction is interruptible… but with fiction it’s worse because when there is an interruption of a considerable period, the entire magic spell is broken and the dream world you have created gets shattered.

Since Riot, I’ve begun two or three novels that I have simply abandoned because you really have to be immersed. I have three novel ideas bubbling at the back of my head. I’m not going to talk about them yet, but god willing, one day, after this book is out of the way, I will try and go back to fiction because so many of my readers are clamouring for more.

Source: The Telegraph

The novel is the English translation of Aniruddha’s Bengali book “Dekha”.

The book “The Vision” explores the cry of the human soul that lurks behind the glittering facade of wealth and luxury of the west, through the eyes of a young confused Briton of Indian origin, who steps into the country of her forefathers to explore the truth of life.

In the event Tharoor, a former union minister and diplomat, stated his vision for the global future.

Tharoor said,”For India we need policies that will promote food security, good neighbourhood and will generate job for people.”

Talking about the present generation who have adopted different languages and cultures, Tharoor said: “This is the total capacity of the Indian mind to capture all other languages. Range of cultural experiences is not bad but its all about capacity.”

Tharoor who is fluent in English, French and Malayalam further added:”India is a land of multiple languages. It has plurality.”

Talking about the governmental activities, Tharoor said:”Don’t judge them with their words, eventually the actions matter”.

Aniruddha is the author five Bengali books that includes ‘Anwesh’, Nihshobde’, ‘Chakra’, Tomake’ and ‘Dekha’.

Name of source: India Blooms

They asked questions on topics ranging from the IPL to the FDI before they acknowledged him as a true leader. The interactive section of the programme was a treat as he shared his views and knowledge with the students.

For Pratuisj Peddireddi, a fourth year student, it was Tharoor’s voice that caught his fancy.

“I listened to some of his lectures online but I was in for a shock when I listened to him in person. He has a voice that makes everyone sit up and notice him. One can never be bored when he is delivering a lecture, unlike many other politicians,” he says.

For Syed Khalid Mohammad, a third year B.Tech student, it was Tharoor’s in-depth knowledge that inspired him.

“It was surprising to see that he had an opinion on everything. He is extremely well read and it is a treat to watch him at the podium. He used humour now and then to keep our attention. I read somewhere that he is one of the most influential people in the country. After meeting him in person, I am sure that he has all the qualities of a good leader,” he says.

Rahul Bhatra, a second year computer science student says, “He is a welcome change from the stereotypical Indian politician. When we think of a politician, we imagine a pot-bellied ignorant person, oblivious of most of the happenings in the world. Whereas Shashi Tharoor is intelligent and calm. If there are 10 people like him in the Cabinet, then India would be a better place.”

Chefs field questions

Aspiring young chefs from various hotel management institutions of the city participated in an inter-college quiz competition, to support a charitable trust called Cheer Foundation.

Winner Ashutosh Kumar and his partner Amarendra Sharma, final year students of IHM Vidhya Nagar commented, “It’s worth doing something like this for the future of these orphans.”

For once, the hospitality industry students were seen competing with other teams. “The buzzer round was my favourite segment and most of my guesses turned out to be right,” said Sanchita Tripathi, third-year student of IHM Shri Shakthi.

“The competition took me back to my school days, I’m glad that the knowledge I garnered helped me support these young lives,” added Adheer Sahgal from IHM Shri Shakthi.

A cheque of Rs 36,000 was handed over to the trust to be used for the education of the homeless.

Name of Source: Deccan Chronicle

Name of Source: TOI

This is a man who has spent most of his life, he’s 56 this year, as a compulsive overachiever (famously, he earned the title of ‘Dr.’ at the tender age of 22 when he wrote his thesis, ‘Reasons of State’, a text that remains compulsory reading for many students of Indian foreign policy). However, a controversy in 2010 centred around the IPL Kochi franchise had his party asking for his resignation. Having declared his innocence, Dr. Tharoor is back in the fray and is considering a new book. Below are excerpts from our interview, conducted partly in person and partly over email.

Your father loved to introduce himself as ‘the author’s author’. He sounds like an unusual man. Would you tell me about him?

My father was an amazingly unusual man. He was a self-made man, the child of a farmer who died when he was 10. My father recounts walking barefoot eight kilometres to school every day from the village. He had a tough upbringing. The elder brother – much older, 17 years older – went away and made good and then took the younger brothers with him to England and so my dad was able to move suddenly from a village life of poverty to go off and study in England at the end of the second WW.

He taught himself English reading Byron and Shakespeare and he wrote beautifully. He wrote mainly letters, and these are gems of correspondence and human contact. He was an amazingly broad minded person for someone growing up in a village in Kerala before the Second World War. It’s amazing that someone like that existed. I am desperately fond of him. He passed away when he was only 63 and the pain still lingers now, 18 years later. One doesn’t quite overcome it.

I’ve often wondered whether God made me the way I am or my parents made me the way I am, but I can’t now do only one thing. I react to the world both through my intellectual reactions if you like, which is what comes out through my writing, but also as a man of action, as someone who wants to deliver results and that manifests itself in my work and both to me are fully necessary. I think if I gave up one or the other, a part of my psyche would wither on the vine.

Even though you weren’t in India when Indira Gandhi declared Emergency in 1975, it had a profound impact on you. Did it discourage you from joining the Indian Foreign Service?

I didn’t take the government exams and I’ve written about this in ‘From Midnight to Millennium’. I felt that as a student during the Emergency, knowing that our government could do such things, and suspend the constitution, at least for a year and a half, that made me profoundly unwilling to serve the government and so I actually did a PhD as a way of postponing the decision to take the IFS exams and then when I joined the UN that was that and I never looked back. After having had a UN career, however, when I wanted to explore my options, the hankering to serve my country came right back again. It had never really left. A lot of my books were about India, a lot of my writing was the perennial scratching of a psychic itch about India.

In a time when so many people are disillusioned with the U.N, what was your own experience of the organisation from the inside?

I was privileged that my 29 years in the UN were all areas that were action-oriented. I began in the UN High Commission for Refugees. It was then so small that we all knew each other by our first names and it kind of grew under me, while I was there because of all the dramatic global crisis that happened soon after I joined the UN in 1978. From the Vietnamese ‘Boat People’ crisis to the Central American crisis to the invasion of Afghanistan, everything happened almost simultaneously, and it suddenly became a very large and serious organisation. But it began very small and I was able to crest that wave of exciting jobs, heading the UN operations in S.E Asia, in Singapore that is dealing with the cases of refugees rescued at sea and those coming into Singapore.

Then after 11 ½ years of that I moved to peacekeeping, again when it was very small, when we had only five people, five civilians and three military in the entire peace keeping staff in New York. I found myself not only being Assistant to the then Under Secretary General Sir Marrack Goulding, but I also ended up being the person handling the Yugoslav crisis when it erupted. It became the largest peacekeeping operation in UN history and there I was helping run it from New York.

So I was very lucky, very busy and given tremendous responsibilities throughout my career. I then worked in Kofi Annan’s immediate office when he was Secretary General and finally ended up as Under Secretary General with 800 staff in 77 countries around the world. So I ended up at no point having a dull day or feeling underwhelmed or under challenged until I tried for the top job and lost it. Lost it narrowly but lost in nonetheless and felt I should move on.

You were so close to becoming the UN Secretary General. It must have been very disappointing.

It was because I had overlooked the simple reality that this was not a job where the guy with the best resume makes it. And I think I would be unnecessarily modest if I didn’t say that I had the best resume as a resume. It’s a political job and there are political considerations on the minds of the 15 countries voting on the council. From their point of view – the then American ambassador to the UN has written a very indiscreet memoir in which he has said that his instructions were to the tune of America didn’t want a strong secretary general and there were bilateral considerations with South Korea for example that would have come in the way of that choice and so on. I have absolutely no resentment about that, that’s the way the game is played. I came in an honourable second, in a race with seven contenders that included a serving president, a number of prime ministers, deputy ministers, foreign ministers, so for me as a mere UN official to be able to do that was enough satisfaction back from that experience.

Are you sometimes surprised to find yourself in politics after all?

I’m certainly surprised to find myself in politics because I don’t come from what is considered the traditional political pedigree i.e is either coming from a political family…there was a study by Patrick French in his book recently where he established that every member of the Indian parliament under 40 (or was it 45? I can’t remember) was a son or daughter of a politician. It worries people obviously because the feeling is that it shouldn’t be such a closed world but it is.

Someone like me would have been a complete misfit in the normal course but I have been privileged to have been given an opportunity by my party president Sonia Gandhi to contest. Then I had to go out there and prove I could do it. I had to go out there in the hot sun in Kerala, talking a language I hadn’t used for three decades or at least only in a very, very limited context. I had to get the message across that I could be someone they could trust to get their message across in the national context.

You’re frequently accused of being elitist – did it concern you that they would not respond?

It was precisely because I anticipated that sort of criticism that I felt I should go the Lok Sabha route and go into the Lower House…I felt it was necessary to earn my credentials as somebody who could connect, but it didn’t stand me in any good stead, after having won the election I still found that I had attracted the deep resentment and hostility of many members of the political class and that is something I probably have not fully overcome and this is people who have done politics all their lives and are probably never going to see an interloper like me, someone who has come from a totally different background in life as somebody who is honing in on their patch.

Does the fallout from the IPL controversy linger? From the outside, it looked like it was the charges against your integrity that seemed to cut deepest at that time.

Yes, after a lifetime of leading a life unblemished by the slightest taint on my integrity, it was hard to be falsely attacked for that. But it also cut deeply to give up a job that I enjoyed and felt I was doing rather well, that of helping shape and shepherd my nation’s place in many parts of the world.

Was the decision to dive back into the fray a difficult one?

I never really left. I’m not a quitter. I stayed, licked my wounds, and continued. I gave up a great deal to make my foray into Indian politics, and I wanted to stay true to the convictions that had brought me into it in the first place, even if my idealism had taken a bit of a bruising.

Your writings – both fiction and non-fiction – have been about India or based in India almost without exception. What makes the country and ‘the idea of India’ such a rich source of inspiration for you?

I look in the mirror and I see an Indian, that’s who I am. I grew up in India from age 2 ½ to age 19 ½ and my spirit was shaped by the experience of being Indian and to me therefore a lot of my own creative energies have been spent in exploring what it means to be Indian, what it means to be India in the world. On the bookshelf are some of the products of that exploration.

I suppose my commitment to India was always something of a conscious choice, since by birth I was entitled to a British passport, and my long residence in the US could have provided an American option for me as well – but I never sought either. I grew up convinced that India was the most interesting country in the world and that it was a privilege to be part of its narrative – let alone help, in a small way, to shaping it.

Just 140 characters leave a great deal of room for misunderstanding – post-several mini-controversies over your tweets, what has kept you online and tweeting?

Imagine you can send something out and 1.2 million people read it. The 140 character limit actually has one very valuable plus point and it means it takes very little time to write… Having done that of course, there are pluses and minuses because even if you do feel it takes less time the consequences of an ill guarded remark can take a lot of time. I’ve been there and you’re far more liable to misinterpretation because you have to be brief.

I began tweeting because I was so thrilled that there were actually three hundred odd people who wanted to follow me as soon as somebody opened an account for me. I really actively started tweeting the day the election results were being counted. As I went around seeing the results and I was getting more and more confident that I would win.

What does 2012 hold for you? Do you have any new projects planned?

Always, though what is unplanned often turns out to offer the most interesting experiences! The first priority is to find a 25th hour every day so that I can finish the book I’ve been struggling to find the time to write… It’s a real frustration. It’s a non-fiction book, though I have various ideas for novels bubbling away in the back of my head, at this point, as someone relatively new in politics, I believe my first book after entering politics ought to be on a subject of policy interest and this is also a subject that matters to me – India’s foreign policy and its place in the world. We’ll see how that goes.

Name of Source: SundaY Times

Sir, you’ve had a glittering career full of professional achievements – and hope it continues. But what do you think is your biggest personal achievement?

My twin sons.(Laughs). On a personal front, I speak with pride, of their success. They’re both in New York – Ishan is working on a novel, and Kanishk is a journalist – both turning out to be very good writers. What more personal accomplishment can you ask for.

Speaking of that, where do you see your writing career going?

At the moment its going nowhere because I’m not getting enough time to write!!

I’ve been a columnist for newspapers in India and abroad, and that’s all I’ve done for a while. I’m currently working on a book about our nation and its place in the 21st century world. Now that book, like any other, requires application of your mind in some way, and sadly, I just have not been able to spend much time on it. So, I have to admit that it’s a bit of a struggle. But, I never want to be a former writer. One day, I’ll get used to being a former minister, but not a former writer.

Your last novel, ‘Riot’ was published almost 10 years back. Can your readers expect a work of fiction anytime soon?

Not immediately, because fiction requires not just time, but some space inside your head too- A space to create and inhabit an alternative moral universe, one whose realities have to be consistent in your own mind. And you can’t allow the spell to be broken by intrusions of reality too much. You can’t easily write a fragment of a novel and return to it eight weeks from now. You simply find you have to reinvent the novel each time you do that. A politician like me has to travel day in and day out, bring work home, stay away from home for a while – those kinds of interruptions are deadly for writing fiction. And I found that an enormous struggle.

So, if I write now, I’d say its more easy to, or I am more likely to write non-fiction. Because non-fiction, its interruptible. Your life is non-fiction. (smiles). Like somebody once said, “I didn’t realize I’ve been speaking in prose all my life”. So even if I interrupt writing (non-fiction), and I’ve been doing it for a while now, I feel I can go back to it at a later point.

Sir, Would you like to speak about your fondness for PG Wodehouse, which somehow reflects in ‘The Great Indian Novel’, perhaps the most celebrated of your works?

(It reflects) Only in sections. (Laughs)

I love Wodehouse – his tremendous escapism, tremendous humor and tremendous sense of alternative reality. And I love his style- his use of language. The ability to make people laugh- its such a gift. Hilarious situations, very cleverly contrived comical plots, and great writing – all of it come together in his books.

As for ‘The Great Indian Novel’, I was once reading a translation of the Mahabharata by the Calcutta professor P Lal who uses a very racy and modern style. I must say that I was struck by the immediacy of the narrative. I said -“I’m reading a 2000 year story that reads as if it could’ve been written yesterday.” And then I thought –“Hey, what if it were written yesterday? What would a contemporary Veda Vyas write about the great events of his time?” So, it started as a sort of playful experiment, taking the frame narrative of the Mahabharata, and some of its style and digressions, its philosophies and situations, and applying them to a retelling of a subject which had fascinated me most- 20th century Indian political history. I think it has really worked – the book is now in its 42nd edition, the new generation is loving it. Readers who weren’t even born when it was written tell me how enjoyable they find it. So what could be more gratifying!

We hope you enjoyed your brief stay at IIM Calcutta. Do you have a message for us?

The message is to be the best you can possibly be. Whether you become a manager, or a professor or a writer – it doesn’t really matter what you are; what matters most is how good you are at it. The worst thing you can do is let yourself down. Do well in your life, and do something good for the country. Best of luck!!

Sir, it’s a privilege to have you in our midst today. Thanks a lot for your words and your time.

Name of Source: Jokatimes

Name of Source: Asian Age