Pathetic

It seems a bit pathetic to respond to a fellow journalist, who is now a celebrated author, on a personal blog. But that’s what my life has come down to. For reasons I have stopped analyzing I have no credible media platform to vent my spleen. So I am thankful for small mercies like this blog.

Arvind Adiga, a former Time magazine journalist who became an internationally recognized author with his debut novel ‘The White Tiger’, has a piece in The Hindustan Times about India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor. In a tone which is recognizably tongue-in-cheek but may in fact be derisive he writes: “There are, it must be conceded, legitimate grounds on which Shashi Tharoor may be attacked. The hair, for instance. It isn’t the 1980s, dude: get it cut. The ultra-posh accent. And I’m talking here of his English accent. One shudders to think what his Malayalam must sound like. And we haven’t yet started on the most sensitive issue — the novels. Has anyone managed to finish Riot?”

It is the last question that I want to answer. Yes, I managed to finish Riot. I do not remember how I felt after reading it. That’s the best I can say for now. I do not know why Adiga “shudders to think what his (Tharoor’s) Malayalam must sound like.” It sounds like some kind of a purity test to me. The man was born in London and has spent more time outside India than back home. It is conceivable that he speaks Malayalam like an “Englishman” extra in a Manoj Kumar movie might speak Hindi. But then so what?

P.S.: Who can call this snippet "venting my spleen?" I have hardly said anything here.