Riot [Hardcover]

Tharoor acknowledges the contribution (at least of the details of a real riot) from one of his real IAS friends. The amount of research that has gone into the book tells us that even if he did not get the help from his friend, he would have still delivered. The style is unique- starting with newspaper clipping of a fictitious newspaper and then swinging from narrative to narrative, some Priscilla's , some from her parents (individually) and some from the luckless Laxman.

The historical details are presented in a totally unbiassed fashion. Unbiassed as in depicting both sides of the story, but wait, there is more to it. Unbiassed means also the courage to tell a tale in a way that is well researched. The beauty of it is that each party's account seems so real, so true but yet it is at odds with the other party's version. Tharoor has achieved the unachievable, making us believe (albeit for a short while) what we do want to believe and then quckly give it up and believe the next thing with equal conviction as we move along effortlessly from one narrative to another.

Do we feel sorry for Priscilla? Was she really in the wrong place at the wrong time? Well , depends on what you call a wrong place. For her it was the right place, at least for a while. Little girl traumatized by her fathers' infidelity-do they all become idealists and hopelessly inadequate? I think not. Do we even feel sorry for laxman? I am sure some people will- but why? I served briefly in the IAS myself. Much of what he says about the cadre is true (even the fact that IPS is next best) but to think that he is representative of the elite civil servants called IAS is wrong. While they may have similar moral turpitude (some may even be able to conveniently recite Oscar Wilde), I would have thought the pillars of Indian Civil Service have on an average stronger morals than what the cowardly Laxman manages.

I have collegaues who constantly bug me to tell them more about India, more about the conflict with Pakistan, more of the Gujrat riots. I usually do not oblige them. Now I don't have to. I can just give them a copy of Riot. I gave one of them the book recently and told him, all you ever wanted to know about India is in the book. I stick by it. It is not a travel guide, but it just as well might be. A travelogue of the journey through the heart and soul of India. That little district town in the Hindi heartland IS India. Shame I can not say the same about the Ram Charan Guptas and above all Laxman.

A fascinating book. For all of you who wanted to visit India and were curious about what is it that India does to you, I have one suggestion- READ THIS BOOK.

Conspicuous by its absence is the conventional "once upon a time" story, the "dear reader..." approach, the omniscient narrator. In fact the writer is almost completely absent in the novel. "Down with the omniscient narrator. It's time for the omniscient reader, " says a character in the novel. The reader of Riot is faced with the task of groping through the evidence and unravelling the story. At times one has the uneasy feeling of being a voyeur, a peeping Tom taking a peek into a private chamber, or reading another's personal diaries or letters, or eavesdropping, or nosing into somebody else's very special, very intimate encounters. But the embarrassment is not allowed to linger as, almost immediately, there is a swing towards the impersonal, an interview conducted by an objective reporter, or the official voice of police personnel in charge, or simply a shift of perspective. All this is part of the narratorial strategy.

Yes, Tharoor is experimenting with narratology, and the experiment is undoubtedly successful! For all the various pieces of the collage are different takes on a central event - the death of Priscilla Hart. How did she die and what were the circumstances? The story is not 'told' to us. It is 'shown' through all these pieces in the collage. The reader's job is to decode the story from these scraps of information.

At the same time, what Riot seeks to present is not simply a whodunit tale, or the story of the poignant death of a visiting American. It goes beyond mere statistics, beyond the factual details of the tragedy, to reconstruct the emotional life of the woman. What was it like to be an outsider in a small, conservative township? What were her personal moments like? The idealism that brought her to that remote spot in the middle of nowhere, the passion for her job, the love interest in her life, the secret rendezvous from time to time, the uncertainty and the agony... the record of her emotional history is sketched vividly in a scrapbook that she maintains.

The paramour, a local Indian administrator who is married but finds himself helplessly involved in a relationship with the American, is also a writer of sorts and keeps his own journal. So we get two perspectives on a single relationship. The clash of cultures, the divergent viewpoints, the inability to understand the working of the other's mind, the imminent end of a foredoomed relationship - all this comes across through the personal journals of the main characters of the novel. Sure, there is passion, even love. But social pressures are far too strong for a lasting relationship. So East remains East and West remains West. Or rather, they would have remained so, had the violence not erupted, causing Priscilla's death and putting an abrupt end to the possibilities of their love story.

This is not to say that Shashi Tharoor is interested in narrating just another tragic romance. More importantly, he is concerned with history as it was lived in a particular chronotopic context. And history is nothing but truth. In an epigraph to Riot taken from Cervantes, Tharoor tells us: "History is a kind of sacred writing because truth is essential to it, and where truth is there god himself is...," thus bringing the three together - history, truth and god. Are they synonymous or is there simply a close kinship between the trinity? The novel lays bare a very personal concept of truth/history/god, presumably based on the author's private belief - that human life being a complex amalgam of paradoxes, human relationships are no less complex, and there are no certitudes, no finalities, no absolutes, no fixed beliefs, nothing good, nothing bad. It is all a matter of perspectives.

This story, like the story of Riot, is a readerly text, open to interpretation - we may read in it whatever meaning we choose. Such is the nature of truth. And of history. Tharoor's novel is about the ownership of truth and history. It presents about a dozen versions of a given situation, no single one being privileged over the other. Truth is like the blackbird that can be looked at in thirteen or more ways. If the story is told (or presented) from Lakshman's and Priscilla's points of view, it is also presented from the varying points of view of the other characters: the staunch Hindutva supporter, the Muslim activist, the police official, the grieving parents of the riot victim, the wronged wife, et. al. Their separate stories contribute towards the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle called truth or history.
"History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors," said T.S. Eliot once. Tharoor in Riot seems to be in agreement with this idea. History, he says, is not a web woven by innocent hands. The different pieces of the collage in Riot are often divergent, often contradictory accounts of the same event. Yet each has its validity. Its own truth. Like the old crone of a story tucked away in "Riot", each is beautiful!