Tharoor draws crowd at lit fest

Nonika Singh

One day my voters may return me to the world of literature, politician-author Shashi Tharoor professed so. Well, his voters may or may not get disenchanted with him, but at the Jaipur Literature Festival, like all these years, he remained a singular star attraction.

On day two of the five-day fest once again his magnetic presence drew crowds like droves. In a session ‘Shashi on Shashi’, his teeming fans got to meet both the politician and the erudite writer. If the Lok Sabha MP couldn’t stop taking digs at the ruling BJP, he also talked about his current favourite subject Hinduism and how it’s markedly different from Hindutva which is no more than a political ideology. If his current concerns as a politician have pulled him away from the world of fiction and immersed him in non-fiction, he is in no mood to pen his autobiography at the moment.

While his life has been a story of dual narratives, the political world he insists is rather uni-dimensional, seen only as black or white, this side or the other. Not surprising, he feels there is no room for humour in politics and one’s sense of humour, can be construed in many unintended ways. Remember his cattle class remark and the furore it kept causing.

Politics of today might b humourless, but in literature there is ample scope for humour. Wit and priceless humour marked the opening session sponsored by The Tribune. Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson’s tongue in cheek repartees were a testimony to his easy wit and self-deprecating sense of humour.

Discussing his latest book ‘Live A Little’, the author of award winning The Finkler Question delighted one and all with his cryptic remarks about his life, his journey as a novelist and what he as a novel writer bears in his mind. Unlike, other authors, Jacobson creates characters to understand others, not himself.

Writing, however, means different things to different people. Like for actress and model Lisa Ray, the compulsion to write her memoir Close to The Bone became a process of healing and self-discovery. Among many other sessions the ones that generated buzz were Letters to a Young Muslim.

Book records fest

Fact meets fiction… and thus Jaipur Literature Festival itself became a topic of Namita Gokhale’s book Jaipur Journals. Hailed as metafiction, the book seeking inspiration from the happenings at the festival became the renowned author and the co-director of the festival Gokhale’s inspiration. Taking cues from real people who have visited the festival over the years, luminaries and festival regulars like Javed Akhtar and Shashi Tharoor find due mention in the book that otherwise unfolds like novel.