Riot-a novel (--Shashi Tharoor)
People who know me may assume that this review will be biased simply because Shashi Tharoor is my latest "celebrity crush", but trust me this is a honest review, the novel is damn good & the novelist damn impressive ;).
The story is about how Priscilla Hart(an American) is murdered in India. The time of the murder having coincided wih the day the riot exploded in 1987(between the Hindus & Muslims over the Ram Janma bhoomi issue)there is a sense of mystery involved. Was it because of personal reasons or was she yet another innocent victim of the riot?
Tharoor has this unique style of presenting the 'present' story interupted by flashes from the past(he used this style in Five dollar smile, a shor story by him).Another distinct feature of the style in which the novel is presented is that it is neither narrated in first person or third person. The novel is actually a sequenced collection of - pages from the personal diaries of the various characters in the story and recorded interviews taken by a journalist form US.
The novel appears to be very real in the sense that - the characters are etchd out verydistinctly & none of them are idealistic, the story doesnt have dramatic twists and turns (so real), it is packed with a lot of historical facts. The book shows how the religious fanatics of each community try to justify their role in the riot. After reading this you get a micro-understanding of the riots in general and of the difficulties involved in convincing the religious fanatics from drawing away from taking extreme decisions in particular.
One more interesting fact that comes up is how the world looked at India probably a decade back. For instance - Priscilla Hart's parents come to India to investigate the issue and when her mother sees the paan stains on the walls in the streets, she assumes that they are blood stains caused by the blod bath during the perpetual riots in India or may be Indians are so malnourished and lack medication that there are so many Indians suffering from tuberculosis that they spit out blood on the streets.
All in all its a novel packed with human emotions like- love, hatred, guilt, religious fanaticism and factual knowledge. I must accept that this might have been a biased review (though not deliberate), the proof being I havent mentioned anything negative about the book. But one thing is for sure that its worth a read.
The story is about how Priscilla Hart(an American) is murdered in India. The time of the murder having coincided wih the day the riot exploded in 1987(between the Hindus & Muslims over the Ram Janma bhoomi issue)there is a sense of mystery involved. Was it because of personal reasons or was she yet another innocent victim of the riot?
Tharoor has this unique style of presenting the 'present' story interupted by flashes from the past(he used this style in Five dollar smile, a shor story by him).Another distinct feature of the style in which the novel is presented is that it is neither narrated in first person or third person. The novel is actually a sequenced collection of - pages from the personal diaries of the various characters in the story and recorded interviews taken by a journalist form US.
The novel appears to be very real in the sense that - the characters are etchd out verydistinctly & none of them are idealistic, the story doesnt have dramatic twists and turns (so real), it is packed with a lot of historical facts. The book shows how the religious fanatics of each community try to justify their role in the riot. After reading this you get a micro-understanding of the riots in general and of the difficulties involved in convincing the religious fanatics from drawing away from taking extreme decisions in particular.
One more interesting fact that comes up is how the world looked at India probably a decade back. For instance - Priscilla Hart's parents come to India to investigate the issue and when her mother sees the paan stains on the walls in the streets, she assumes that they are blood stains caused by the blod bath during the perpetual riots in India or may be Indians are so malnourished and lack medication that there are so many Indians suffering from tuberculosis that they spit out blood on the streets.
All in all its a novel packed with human emotions like- love, hatred, guilt, religious fanaticism and factual knowledge. I must accept that this might have been a biased review (though not deliberate), the proof being I havent mentioned anything negative about the book. But one thing is for sure that its worth a read.
posted by Sweta at
12:01 AM
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