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Shashi Tharoor once again shot into fame with the publication of his sixth book Riot.Two renowned and established publishers in two different corners of the world published this novel almost simultaneously. These two publishers - Viking Penguin (in India) and Arcade Publishing (in America) - published the book with different cover designs and subtitles to suit the audience of different sensibilities and, in turn, to reach a wider audience. The instant appeal of the novel to readers can be fathomed by the fact that all the leading English newspapers in India were found replete with different reviews of the novel immediately after it was launched with a great fanfare at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, in the presence of many celebrities like Sudhir Kakkar, Kushwant Singh, Mark Tully, artist Jatin Das, Namita Gokhle, Manju Kapur, Indian Express editor Sekhar Gupta and Sunny Singh. Additionally, this novel found some critics and reviewers abroad too. Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel hails Shashi Tharoor as 'a major voice in contemporary literature' ¹ . This major voice has been trying to solve different kinds of global problems as a senior official of the United Nations for more than two decades. Nevertheless, India always matters immensely to him and, in all his works, he wants to matter to India ² and Riot is a great testimony to this fact. Shobori Ganguli perceives rightly that you can take him out of India but you cannot take India out of him ³ . A reading of this novel, supposedly, makes it clear that Tharoor seems to be living his life on two levels. On one level, he appears to be 'the quintessential international civil servant keeping the peace and dousing the flames in the world's flashpoints' ⁴ and on the other, he seems to search the way-out of pacifying communalism and violence plaguing Indian awareness to a great extent.

Tharoor has been generous, unlike most of his predecessors, in giving interviews about his writings and literary theories. This enables readers to appreciate his works better - sometimes, arguably, with mathematical precision. In an interview with Sunil Sethi, he claims that, unlike his earlier two satirical novels, this novel is to be taken seriously and that takes itself seriously ⁵ . He also adds that it focuses on collisions of various sorts - between individuals, between cultures, between ideologies and between religions. He goes on to say that the novel by focusing 'on one place, one time, a small group of people helps illuminate the kind of issues I want to talk about - our identity and communalism and so on' ⁶ . In the interview with First City he discloses that he wanted 'to showcase the multiplicity of perspectives, since people are disputing the ownership of history and trying to uncover the truth behind a certain event' ⁷ .

Several writers have acclaimed the novel as a great piece of literature. For instance, Elie Wiesel finds that the novel is not only 'written with elegance and sensitivity' but it is also 'a remarkable tale of violence and hope in a land that has known both…' ⁸ . For Uma Nair it is a novel that 'flows and ebbs like the tide' ⁹ . Radhika Khanna views it as an attempt to put Indian readers to 'self-examination' ¹⁰ . Deloris Tarzan Ament finds this book a beautiful amalgamation of all the nine elements - love, hate, joy, sorrow, pity, disgust, courage, pride and compassion - which make a book great ¹¹ . On the other hand, we also get a critic like Sagarika Ghosh who is not ready to accept this book even as a novel:

… Riot disappoints because it remains restricted to the level of an essay. Emotion and character make brief, very rare intrusions. The gut is never wrenched. The hormones never stimulated. Tears don't spring to the eyes. Instead there are a series of extremely erudite explanatory notes on India ranging from district administration, pluralist shrines, the rise of Hindutva, economic reforms and the caste and class dichotomy. The prose has the brahminical accuracy of social science. Not the seductive intimacy of fiction ¹² .

To me Ghosh's comments seem to be hurriedly concluded ones and partially true. She is justified in saying that Riot reads like a social and political treatise. Nonetheless, the reader, on occasions, gets the taste of a wonderful poetry of love. To illustrate, there are several graphic and touching scenes which trace the progress of intimacy between Priscilla Hart and Lakshman. The plot, at times, lapses into romance and there are plenty of instances of eroticism in the novel. In addition, to repeat Deloris T Ament's words, Riot is a wonderful fusion of nine elements like love, hate, sorrow, pity, and joy etc which constitute a great novel. In my opinion, Ghosh seems to have underestimated this work by classifying it as an essay.

Thus, it appears that the novel is great in more than one way. One of the strengths of the novel lies in the unconventional narrative structure the writer has come up with, perhaps, successfully. This fact has been highlighted and justified by the writer also who defines novel as a literary genre in which one can always bring some kind of novelty ¹³ . Tharoor himself is a great experimentalist and, therefore, it does not seem very surprising that he has tried his hand on a very unconventional structure. This paper is a modest attempt to highlight some features of the narrative structure of Riot. Further, it also aims to find out its suitability to the plot of the novel. Besides, it tries to discover how well time is interwoven in the narrative of the text.

The genesis of the novel lies in two historical facts. A friend of Tharoor sends him a very detailed report about a riot in Madhya Pradesh. Almost at the same time he reads a newspaper report that an American woman has been killed in a racial riot in South Africa. These two events have been intermingled together to produce Riot.

The first striking point about the narrative is that the whole novel is divided into seventy-eight sections of varying length. These sections help in unfolding the story of the novel in a two-tier system. The first strand runs through records, entries and letters whereas the second one unwinds through interviews, conversations and interrogations. The various sections give the novel a feel of an encyclopedia where each section brings a perspective about Priscilla Hart's multidimensional personality, her universe and also the tragic flaw of her character, if any, which might have contributed to her death. Further, many of these sections also try to explore the socio-political condition of the time in which she lived and worked in India and finally got trapped in its whirlpool leading to her death. In addition, as discussed earlier too, one of the great merits of this novel is that though each section is an independent whole in itself, we can find interrelatedness among them. Besides, like an encyclopedia, we can take the liberty of reading it in any order without missing the crux of the story. This novel contradicts Nicholas Marsh’s view of a novel that every novel should start with exposition and then go on to resolution via complication ¹⁴ . Here, the novel begins with resolution, if gone by the spatial arrangement, and then keeps on alternating between exposition and complication. Tharoor's one of the two main characters, administrator cum author, Lakshman writes in his journals:

I would like to write a novel that doesn't read like a novel. Novels are too easy - they tell a story, in a linear narrative, from start to finish. …I would do it differently. … in which you can turn to any page and read … They're all connected, but you see the interconnections differently depending on the order in which you read them. (pp 135-36)

On close scrutiny, we discover that Tharoor, through Lakshaman, is expounding his own philosophy of novel. Tharoor appears to have echoed Andre Gide's idea of 'a transposition of the theme of a work to the level of the character' ¹⁵ . This technique has been discussed by many French literary critics. A famous example from Gide's own work is The Counterfeiters ¹⁶ where 'a character is engaged in writing a novel similar to the novel in which he appears' ¹⁷ . In Riot, Lakshaman dreams to write a novel that can be read in any order but he is, perhaps, ignorant of the fact that he is already a part of the identical novel. Tharoor also believes that though the novel possesses the potential to be read in any order, readers will definitely enjoy a sort of interconnectedness among different sections. To further illustrate Tharoor's point of view objectively, I would like to summarise some sections in the following tables:

Table 1            The New York Journal

Date	Event/Description
October 2, 1989	a.   Priscilla Hart, 24 of Manhattan, a student doing research for doctoral degree at New York University, presently engaged with an NGO named Help-US, was killed during Hindu-Muslim riot in Zalilgarh (UP). b. Other details regarding her killing remain obscure.
October 3, 1989	a.   reports reactions of her teachers and parents on her death. b.  Everyone praises her as a student and also as a human being.
October 4, 1989	Priscilla's separated parents plan to visit India to view the site of their daughter's death and also to talk to her friends about the circumstances leading to her death.
October 16, 1989	a.        After saying good-bye to her friends on 30 Sept, she bicycles to an abandoned fort on the Jamuna river perhaps to have a last glimpse of the sunset in India. b.       On 1 Oct she is found dead with 16 stab wounds. c.        Hindus had organised a big procession to take the bricks finally to Ayodhya site.

 

Table 2            Catharine Hart's (Priscilla's mother) diary

Date	Event/Description
October 9, 1989	She remembers her past family life especially her daughter's qualities.
October 12, 1989	a.        her meeting with Help-Us worker, Kadambari. b. She visits Priscilla's room, does not find her scrapbook she was very fond of using.
October 13, 1989	her visit to Zalilgarh hospital with Kadambari
October 16, 1989	a.  goes back with her divorced husband to the USA. b.       senses her daughter's love affair with Lakshaman. c.        does not know the truth about her daughter's death, but  knows only the official version.

 

Table 3  Randy Diggs' (a journalist of the New York Journal) notebook

Date	Event /Description
October 10, 1989	scenes of Delhi airport, and features of Priscilla's parents
October 11, 1989	comments on the heat and dust of Zalilgarh.
October 11, 1989	a.  Priscilla's parents and Randy Diggs accommodated in a PWD guest-house because of lack of a good hotel in Zalilgarh. b. a brief talk between Rudyard Hart and Mr Diggs
October 12, 1989	meets  some local Hindu leaders including Ram Charan Gupta to know the politics of riot
October 12, 1989	describes Professor Sarwar's perspective on the riot etc
October 14, 1989	writes about the SP's (Gurinder Singh's version) version of the riot and his association with the DM, V Lakshaman

 

Table 4            Letters from Priscilla to her friend, Cindy Valeriani

Date	Event /Description
Feb 2, 1989	a.        writes to her friend about her  1st meeting with the DM of Zalilgarh, his arranged marriage, his wife and his daughter, Rekha b.       likes the DM but makes it clear that she is not in love with him c.        feels obliged to the DM for his help in knowing India and also Hindu-Muslim conflict
Feb 16, 1989	a.        Priscilla asks the DM to convey her regret to his wife, Geeta, for not dining at his residence after making love at Kotli. b.       She feels that she has found Mr Right in the wrong place at the wrong time.
April 5, 1989	writes about her love relationship with V Lakshaman
July 25,  1989	writes to her friend about Fatima Bi's incident in which she had to face a tough time when she (Fatima) suggested to her husband to think about the birth control as she could not cope with seven malnourished and sickly children she had
Aug 5, 1989	her meeting with the SP, Gurinder Singh, at a dinner at the DM's house
Aug 15, 1989	describes about  the independence day and her intimacy with and longing for  the DM
Aug 22, 1989	a. wishes she could come to Zalilgarh b. writes about Fatima Bi's call and her abortion in her husband's absence
Sep 3, 1989	a. seeks her advice as to the expected turn her relationship with the DM should take in the given situation b.  informs her about the cruel treatment Fatima had to suffer at her husband's hand for aborting the unwanted pregnancy
Sep 18, 1989	a.        shares her intimate moments with the DM b.       enquires if the DM also is in love with her

 

Table 5            Lakshaman's conversations with Priscilla Hart

Date	Event /Description
Feb 27, 1989	a. talks about India, its languages, its diversity and its problems like Naxal Movement c.        also talks about his social relationships and marriage
July 1, 1989	a.        speaks of Hindu-Muslim relationship in India b.       also tries to develop his relationship with her
Aug 22, 1989	Lakshaman tries to convince her of his deep love for her but she is not happy with only his rhetoric of love as she wants a permanent relationship with him which seems utterly unlikely in their case because of a cultural gap existing between them

 

Here it may be pointed out that the dates and entries (appearing in the form of letters, diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, interviews and conversations) given in the tables do not follow strictly the same time-sequences in the book. In fact, the time-sequences have been  reconstructed (in tables 1-5) to show a thematic interconnectedness. Events/descriptions follow somewhat cinematic way in this novel. Sections have been   arranged according to text-time and not according to story-time. Story-time, ideally, refers to the 'natural chronology'¹⁸ whereas text-time is a 'spatial dimension'¹⁹ i.e. the way text has been arranged in the novel irrespective of a natural chronology. A random selection of entries (sections), in table 6, falling between pp 51 to 101 will make the concept of text-time clear:

 

Table 6            Entries arranged according to the text-time

Date	Entries (Sections)
Oct 12, 1989	From Randy Digg's notebook
Oct 12, 1989	Ram Charan Gupta to Randy Diggs
Jul 16, 1989	From Priscilla Hart's scrapbook
Aug 26, 1989	Prof Mohammed Sarwar to V Lakshaman
Feb 16, 1989	Letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani
Oct 13, 1989	Randy Diggs' interview with V Lakshaman
Mar 26, 1989	From Lakshaman's Journal
Oct 12, 1989	From Randy Diggs notebook
Apr 5, 1989	Letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani
Oct 12, 1989	From Catharine Hart's Diary

The layout of only 50 pages of the book (table 6) speaks volumes about the weaving of narratives in the book. Narratives here defy the strict succession of events, arguably, because of a multitude of characters. Tzvetan Todoror also reiterates that strict succession (of events) can only be found in stories with a single line or even with a single character. He, further, illustrates that the minute there is more than one character, events may become simultaneous and the story is often multilinear rather than unilinear ²⁰ . A short survey of the events mentioned in table no 6 and earlier tables (1-5) proves Deloris T Ament's observation that Riot slips back and forth in time, before and after the murder… ' ²¹ . It may be mentioned here that the murder of Priscilla Hart took place on 30 September 1989, however, the narration goes long back down the memory lane and also takes an excursion into the future of the story.

The whole novel is set in 1989. This year has been selected because of its history - a time which led to the major Ayodhya episode. Going by all the entries (seventy-eight) of the novel, we discover that the events of this novel start on 2 February 1989 and end on 16 October 1989. So, it uses an actual time span of only eight and a half months. However, going by the references of various historical events of the book, readers get a bigger canvas of time encompassing the events of pre and post 1989, for instance, Hindu-Sikh riot in 1984, and the Ayodhya incident in 1992/93. If' afterword' of the novel is considered to be an extension of the novel, Tharoor also refers to the declaration made by the various affiliates of Sangh Pariwar regarding the commencement of the construction of a temple in Ayodhya in March 2002 much to the embarrassment of the Prime Minister. Really, facts of history have been exploited by the novelist to bring life and dynamism to the novel and, in turn, to make the novel highly interesting. Tharoor advocates the importance of historicity of time in Riot:

I think the best crystal ball is the rear-view mirror. … It is part of the writer's job to recapture moments of history. My novel stands as portrait of time, of tendencies that were brought to the fore, the genie that was let out of the bottle and could not be put back. I felt we should take that genie by looking it squarely in the eye. ²²

The tables (No. 1-6) above also give some insights into a large number of narrators who either communicate face to face to other characters or through the written mode like letters, notebooks, diaries, cables, greetings and scrapbooks. These different types of narrators justify their existence in more than one way.

Firstly, when taking the subject matter of the novel seriously, one realizes that they (different narrators) help in weaving the plot of the book. A young American lady researcher doing her doctoral degree at New York University spends 10 months in a small town of UP working for female population control awareness programme. Just before she is set to leave for New York, she is murdered. All the narrators try to piece together events that could have possibly led to her murder. Tharoor shares the view with Shobri Ganguli that the novel is about the knowability of truth ²³ . So, naturally the more perspectives we get about the murder of Priscilla Hart, the greater is the chance of getting the root of the heinous event. Though the irony of the situation is that no one - from the local politicians to civic and police authorities including a foreign correspondent - has been able to come to the truth. These narrators instead of resolving the mystery ask unresolved questions like: who are we? By what do we define ourselves? What do we hate? Why do we hate? These existential questions concern all the readers and, supposedly, are left to them to find the answer.

Secondly, coming back to the issue of several unresolved questions, this novel suggests the difficulty of telling the untold. Even the told sounds like a provisional category. 'Our knowledge of this fact will ultimately effect our ability to pass judgement on the characters of the novel' ²⁴ . The helplessness on the part of narrators as regards to the untold is, perhaps, inevitable. Elizabeth K Wallace boldly asserts that generally a story leaves out as much as it includes ²⁵ . Further, Wallace's conviction ²⁶ that 'the told always consists of multiple possibilities or interpretations' also holds good for this novel. Besides, sometimes narration itself complicates the category of told and untold. We may also agree with Wallace's idea that what gets told depends very much not only on who asks for the story, but also on what motivates the telling ²⁷ . Catharine Hart's interview with Lakshaman bears testimony to this fact:

Katherine Hart: … I 'm not trying to embarrass you, Mr. Lakshaman. I just want to understand everything I can about my daughter's death.

Lakshaman: I wish I could help you, Mrs. Hart. But there was nothing between us. If you will permit me to say this, sometimes it is best not to assume we can know everything. Your daughter led a good and admirable life. She worked for others; she was popular and well-respected. She died a tragic, senseless death. You know the old Greek adage, the good die young. That was all there was to it.

Katherine Hart: But there was more. There was something else, something that might explain, why she was there, in that out-of-the-way-place. Perhaps it had to do with some aspect of her life we don't know about.

Lakshaman: Perhaps. But does it matter what we do not know?

Katherine Hart: I suppose you're right. (pp 253-54)

In this interview, in spite of a clever dig about the circumstances in which her daughter, Priscilla, lived and died, Katherine Hart is not satisfied with the responses. In the same interview she also refers to the fact (gathered from her daughter's letter) that she was in love with someone in authority. Lakshaman very intelligently tries to brush her doubt aside: "But I'm overworked, overweight and married. It couldn't have been me " (p 253). However, she tries to reconstruct the untold on the basis of her intuition and conviction of the facts of correspondences she had with Priscilla and ignores Lakshaman's explanation. Looking at the whole scene from the viewpoint of Lakshaman, it seems that he is terribly helpless to suppress the untold because of its far-flung implications. Tharoor exploits the tension between the told and the untold to unfold the different facets of human drama.

Thirdly, a band of narrators have replaced the omniscient narrator in this novel. The whole novel travels through the eyes and voices of different narrators, fitting between all kinds of relevant documents like news clippings, personal letters, notebooks, journals, scrapbooks, private conversations, and transcripts of interviews ²⁸ . The omniscient narrator never leads us through the dark and circuitous corridors of history. That is why, we witness a first-person narrative in which the identified speaker relates everything from his or her point of view. This type of narration lends the novel a realistic touch. In case of an omniscient narrator, the writer leaves behind a deep seal of his personality on his characters. But the technique employed in the novel gives a narrator freedom to shape his/her views and philosophy. Tharoor while talking to Sandip Roy-Chowdhury explains the value of this freedom:

In describing Zalilgarh from Mrs. Hart's perspective, I had not just to visualize the town … but to ask myself what a middle-aged, intelligent but fairly conservative American woman would notice about it. ²⁹

Besides, Riot portrays different types of conflict - of people, attitudes, philosophies, religions, loves and hatreds. Therefore, it was difficult to have just one point of view and naturally, a multitude of narrators was needed to have, presumably, different points of view. I agree with Tharoor, who acknowledges the suitability of this particular narrative structure which brings 'multiplicity of perspectives' ³⁰ . He, further, elaborates it that this special feature enables 'each character to have his/her own voice, whatever their biases, prejudices and levels of incomprehension' ³¹ . Wallace (2000:238) too admits that the movement among the various points of view facilitates the readers' sense of contrasting perspectives ³² . Some examples will make this point clearer. Ram Churn Guppy is an extremist firebrand Hindu who feels that even the Taj Mahal is actually a Hindu temple. Prof Sarwar believes in India's pluralism but, by no means, he is a representative of majority of Muslim opinion. He is basically a historian who has rediscovered faith in his own religion after remaining a die-hard communist for a long time. Fatima Bi loves the idea of birth control but her menfolk threaten Priscilla Hart with dire consequences if she continues to influence Fatima's thought.

Finally, the theme of juxtaposition, used by narrators, also lends greatness to the novel ³³ . To put it differently, in the novel, a national narrative has been sharply contrasted with the narrative of individual love and loss. This brings it closer to the category of the great novels (like Anna Karenina) of the world. Actually, Tharoor tries to raise big issues like communal peace and harmony and population control using the life of ordinary people. Further, the narration of romance conventions and historical realism not only creates a tension but it also gives a momentum to the novel.

To sum up, we can say that the multiplicity of stories in the novel defies linearity and therefore, the writer’s experiment with the narration, in which the reader can begin with any section, suits the novel. Further, the presence of several narrators is aptly justified because the writer needs different perspectives, in an attempt, to know the unknowable truth. It appears that in a world where cause and effect relation is not always tenable, we need to understand history in a different way. Here, history does not seem to be a rational unfolding but a chaotic succession of events in which these narrators randomly clutch bits and pieces, in a futile attempt, to make sense of their world. In spite of all these, narration has to go on because it is, perhaps, the only force capable of healing painful rifts and weeping wounds. Additionally, the plot of the novel justifies the way time has been treated. Though the story actually spans only eight and a half months (2 February 1989 – 16 October 1989), it takes us much deeper in our memory and imagination of various events. In other words, we receive not only past information about the character, event and story line mentioned at that point but also a glimpse of subsequent events. To recapitulate the whole discussion, Shashi Tharoor seems successful in his experiment with the narrative technique employed in the novel.

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References:

1. Elie Wiesel. 'Shashi Tharoor'. Online. http://www.emalayali.com/a6news.htm; Accessed on 19.11.2001

2. Sandip Roy-Chowdhury. 'Love in the time of riots'. India Currents,  October 2001. Online. /reviews/riot/indiacurrents.html Accessed on 19.11.2001

3.Shobori Ganguli. 'The great Indian novelist returns with a riot'. The Pioneer, August 18, 2001. Online. /reviews/riot/pioneer.html Accessed on 19.11.2001

4. Kaushik Mitter. 'Silence! It's riot'. Online. /reviews/riot/deccanchronicle.html Accessed on 19.11.2001

5. Sunil Sethi. 'Interview with Shashi Tharoor'. Online. http://ndtv.com/exclusive/showexclusive.asp?id=614 Accessed on 19.11.2001

6. Ibid.

7. First City. 'In conversation with Shashi Tharoor'. Online. /books/riot/firstcity.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001

8. 'Shashi Tharoor'. Online. http://www.emalayali.com/a6news.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001

9. Uma Nair. 'Once upon this time'. The Asian Age, August 19, 2001. Online. /books/riot/asianage.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001

10. Radhika Khanna. 'Notes from Shashi Tharoor's first US reading of Riot'. Online. http://www.saja.org/reporttharoor.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001

11. Deloris Tarzan Ament. 'Passion Politics entwined in novel of a complex India'. The Seattle Times, 23, 2001. Online. http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.co …/ Accessed on19.11.2001.

12.Sagarika Ghose. 'When Forster Meets Hindutva'. Online. Wysiwyg://25/http://wwww.outlookindia.com/fullprint.asp Accessed on 19.11.2001.

13. Meenakshi Kumar. 'Tharoor pens a picture of communal Unrest'. Hindustan Times-City, August 16, 2001. Online. Wysiwyg:http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/160801/htc01.asp Accessed on 19.11.2001.

14. Nicholas Marsh. 'Structure'. How to Begin English Literature. London:Macmillan. 1987. p 38.

15. Andre Gide.Journal 1889-1939. Paris : Gallimard.1948. p 41. Cited in Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan 'Narration:levels and voices'. Narrative Fiction : Contemporary Poetics. London :Methuen.1988. p. 93.

16. Andre Gide. The Counterfeiters. Paris : Gallimard. 1949. p 41. Cited in Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan 'Narration:levels and voices'. Narrative Fiction : Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. 1988. p. 93.

17. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. 'Narration : levels and voices'. Narrative Fiction : Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. 1988. p 93.

18. 'Text: time'. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. p 45

19. Ibid., p 44.

20. Tzvetan Todorov. 'Les categories du recit'. Communications.1966. 8, p 127. Cited in 'Story:events'. Narrative Fiction:Contemporary Poetics. London :Methuen.1988. p 17

21. 'Passion Politics entwined in novel of a complex India'. The Seattle Times, September 23, 2001.. Online. http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.co …/ Accessed on19.11.2001.

22. 'In conversation with Shashi Tharoor'. Online. /books/riot/firstcity.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001.

23. Shobori Ganguli. The Pioneer, August 8, 2001. Online. /books/riot/pioneer.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001.

24. Elizabeth K Wallace. 'Telling Untold Stories: Philippa Gregory's A Respectable Trade and David Daydeen's A Harlot's Progress'. Novel: A forum of fiction. Vol 33. No 2. Spring 2000. p 239.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., p 249.

27. Ibid., p 239.

28. 'The great Indian novelist returns with a riot'. The Pioneer, August 8, 2001. Online. /books/riot/pioneer.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001.

29. 'Love in the time of riots'. India Currents, October 2001. Online. /books/riot/indiacurrents.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001.

30. 'In conversation with Shashi Tharoor'. Online. /books/riot/firstcity.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001.

31. Ibid.

32. 'Telling Untold Stories: Philippa Gregory's A Respectable Trade and David Daydeen's A Harlot's Progress'. Novel: A forum of fiction.p 238.

33. Renuka Narayan. 'Big stories , Little Lives'. The Express Magazine, August 26, 2001. Online. /books/riot/express.htm Accessed on 19.11.2001