BOOKLESS IN BAGHDAD: On Writing and Writers by SHASHI THAR00R Penguin Viking, New Delhi, 2005 236pp., Rs. 325 ISBN 0-67-005820-3

Some years ago, I read an interview of Shashi Tharoor in the New York Times. The interviewer, a lady obviously stuck in the solar plexus by Shashi Tharoor’s ineluctable charm, inevitably asked him how he balances his writing impulses—eight books were evidence enough—with his demanding, high profile UN job. What exactly Tharoor answered I forget, but the conclusion she drew left an unforgettable impression—of Shashi Tharoor in diplomatic gear dealing with the worries of the world during the day in the top floors of the UN building, then wending his way back to his Manhattan apartment, getting into something more comfortable, rustling up a light meal and tea on his way to the computer, working through the night on his book breaking only to dash off a fortnightly column, and then as the first rays of the sun lit up the East river with its Pepsi Cola sign on the far bank and the occasional lazy barge, changing back into the three-piece and wending his way back to the UN building, a somewhat weary but satisfied look on his face. Somewhat exaggerated, you would say, and I admit to that fault. But you know what I mean; the man does seem to do something like that and provides good old-fashioned inspiration to all those who try to balance a day job with the passion to pen.

But role models, I am afraid, can engender envy as easily as admiration, and some of this envy tends to slip into the way some reviewers receive the products of his fluent pen. A case in point is one review of the latest product —Bookless in Baghdad—where the reviewer tries to make the point that this book has only been written since Tharoor does not have the time, given his other duties, to write something new and creative and what else anyway, does he do with his file of yellowing clippings? Well, so what? If I, or in fact the reviewer I am referring to, had a matching set of clippings, yellowing or laminated, one of the best things that we could do with them would have them put into a book. In this way, instead of carping and criticising, we would have been able to do what Shashi Tharoor has done—give the Indian reader in English what is probably the first real book on books in the post- Rushdie era. No doubt there are academic tomes and such like, steeped in the dense vocabulary of literary criticism, but what we did not have was something in the nature of Micheal Dirda’s Readings or Anne Fadman’s classic Ex-Libris, a book that would explore, in a readable fashion, the world of writers, of lovers of books, of literary trends. Bookless in Baghdad, with its ironically timely title— though I wish there was the usual apology to Aldous Huxley included somewhere—fills that gap on at least my bookshelf admirably.

For some of us, the next best thing to writing ourselves is reading about other writers—their methods, their literary roots, their gurus, their idiosyncrasies. Tharoor’s essays and columns lightly cover a broad canvas, etching out evocative pictures of several literary masters. In these columns one meets the incomparable Pablo Neruda as a committed poet who could not be bound forever by diplomatic protocol, Malcolm Mugggeridge as the last Englishman, Pushkin known only fleetingly in the world but worshipped like a God in Russia, LeCarré as master of the Cold War spy novel, Churchill, Naipaul and, in more than one piece, Salman Rushdie. All the pieces are marked by Tharoor’s felicitous turn of phrase but all are not essays in admiration or positive assessment. There is, for instance, an unusual piece on Nirad Chaudhari, which squarely calls him what he was; it is unusual in that it was written after Chaudhari’s death, when the world only expects encomiums in obituaries. There is another bravely trenchant essay that dares to question the use of language by, hold your breath, R K Narayan. It was only after reading this piece—a fine example of what an intelligent writer writing on books can do—did I have the courage to admit to myself that I had never been able to read fully a Narayan novel.

There a few pieces, more personal in nature, that deal with the impulses and sources of Tharoor’s own books- The Great Indian Novel, Riot and Show Business, including one which explores the angst of the sensitive writer watching his book being cannibalized for the screen. At some points, Tharoor sounds unnecessarily defensive; he has no reason to be. He has let slip in a piece in which he discusses the rather sensitive and often prickly relationship between writers and reviewers and rightly concludes that “a review, good or bad, is a transient thing; a book, if it was worth writing, will endure long after the review is forgotten.” As long as a book has been written with genuine conviction and passion, little more than curiosity should worry the writer when the reviews start coming out.

Bookless in Baghdad is worth reading and keeping for one essay alone—that on PG Wodehouse and India. Like the author, I clearly remember Valentine’s day 1975 when the news about the great man’s death broke. Tharoor heard it on All India Radio; I saw it in that great vanished institution of New Delhi, Evening News, as I sat having tea in that other great vanished cafe, Bankura. A dark cloud suddenly eclipsed all good humour, all joy, all careless romance from the world. Like Tharoor, I too had a letter that was never sent to the Master though mine would not have been, as Tharoor’s, from the President of the Wodehouse Society of St Stephens College but from a besotted schoolboy. I got a chance years later to convey the sentiments of the letter in silent homage to the Master in the special enclosure in the Dulwich Public School library where only genuine admirers are carefully let in and allowed to spend a few minutes near Wodehouse’s writing table, in handtouching distance of that magical typewriter, with original first editions on the shelves, pipes, photographs and so on. These similarities of experience between a writer and reviewer are not common and speak of the widespread impact that Wodehouse had on an entire generation of Indians reading English literature. Today, 30 years on, the Wodehouse magic has not paled and continues to live and thrive in India, much more than in the UK or in the USA.

In Bookless in Baghdad, Shashi Tharoor comes through as a reader’s writer and I would commend the book to all those who like spending entire mornings in strange cities in second hand bookshops, sniff at beloved yellowing pages, run loving fingers across leather bindings, hide Right Ho, Jeeves under the pillow and so on. I would only add one warning: try not to read the book at a go. Rather, dip into it as the mood takes you and relish it