BOOKLESS IN BAGHDAD: Reflections on Writing and Writers by SHASHI THAR00R Penguin 236pp Rs. 325

An interesting potpourri of essays written by an author who grew up on Enid Blytons and Wodehouse.

Shashi Tharoor’s Bookless in Baghdad is a collection of essays on literary topics that have appeared in a variety of publications over the past decade. It is also his ninth book to be published, including one jointly produced with M F Hussain. Tharoor writes in a style that reads very easily and there are several essays in this collection that could merit a longer, more introspective treatment.

The majority of the essays published here are eminently readable pieces. His essay on “Growing up with books in India” brought back fond memories of my own childhood, as I am sure it will for many of us who write and think in English, with images of the now-unfashionable Enid Blyton characters (Tharoor proudly proclaims that he read his first 'Noddy' book at the age of three) ; (Billy) Bunter, the redoubtable Biggles, Richmal Crompton's 'William' series; P G Wodehouse Birbal and Tenaliraman, Tintin, Asterix and Classics Illustrated... he sets the tone with nostalgia.

I found his piece on that timeless classic, the Mahabharata, most absorbing. (“Mining the Mahabharata.”) While his arguments for ‘Mining the Mahabharata’ for his own novel, the Great Indian Novel, falls a little flat, there is no doubt that the Mahabharata is still relevant to the Indian, and indeed the citizens of the world. He quotes the translator P Lal: “...the epic of Vyasa is not a literary masterpiece out there, somewhere in the past, or tucked away in air-conditioned museums and libraries. Its characters still walk the Indian streets, its animals populate our forests, its legends and myths haunt and inspire the Indian imagination...” Tharoor has also sought to remind us of the writing of great writers and poets - in particular, the essays on Alexander Pushkin and the great Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda.

Tharoor has also included some essays on Salman Rushdie, whose life has seen tumultuous upheavals because of his writing. He has, I feel, got a little carried away by his praise for Rushdie's writing, even going so far as to use Evelyn Waugh's famous description of Wodehouse as the 'head of our profession' to describe Salman's position in Tharoor's life as an "Indian novelist." But one cannot quibble over such trifles - perhaps we need to be reminded of Rushdie's enviable position in today's literary world, no small feat for an Indian, for one of our Midnight's Children.

There is also a delectable piece on Normal Mailer's reaction to the critics' trashing of his Harlot's Ghost, a 1,334 page novel on the CIA and the American psyche. The incident described here is on how Mailer demanded and surprisingly obtained, the right to reply in the New York Times Book Review.

An essay on V S Naipaul opens out angles that provide for a lot of quiet ruminating. In particular, the published letters between Naipaul and his father (“Between Father and Son: Family Letters”). Bookless in Baghdad is an essay the author had written in 1998, when the U N was still on ‘weapons inspection trips’ to Baghdad. It is a sad little essay on the city that was the setting for Scheherzade, the storyteller of the 1,001 Arabian Nights, and how citizens were selling books in order to simply survive.

There are many such memorably crafted essays that make this book worth possessing. Even if Tharoor cannot resist including a speech that he gave at the International Festival of Literature in Berlin in September, 2003 as one of his 'essays,' he can be forgiven: the speech is eloquent and passionate about world peace post 9/11. It is a grim reminder of the difficult times we live in and of the world that this writer has chosen: he belongs to a motley crowd of well-meaning people who still believe that the United Nations can bring about peace. Which makes one feel indulgent even at Shashi Tharoor's attempts at self-aggrandisement in some parts of the book.