By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS,
New Delhi : The writer in the busy Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor appears to have taken a backseat. And the minister is wistful.
“I have not written anything in a while since joining the government, barring tweeting and writing regular official notes and missives,” Tharoor said, with a twinge of regret and nostalgia, at the ongoing Penguin Spring Fever 2010 at the India Habitat Centre.
“I barely have enough time to read these days. Sadly, I have left all that behind me. That creative part of me is deeply unfulfilled – caught somewhere between my ministry and my constituency where I have to devote time. I can barely meet the demands of my ministry and the writer in me,” Tharoor told IANS.
“It is no accident that most politicians who have written books have done it while in the opposition. I get at least a dozen messages on the twitter every day from my fans who want to know why I am not writing – or when I will write my next book and what it will be about,” Tharoor said.
“I hope this will be a temporary situation and I can get back to writing again,” he said.
The suave UN official-career diplomat- writer-turned minister, however, still loves to talk about the Mahabharata, the epic which he re-interpreted in the context of 20th century politics as a satire, “The Great Indian Novel” in 1989.
“Every character in the Mahabharata has human failings – perhaps barring Krishna – and they address contemporary sensibilities. It makes the epic more relevant than any other Indian epic because there is this huge classical movement that exists in our collective consciousness. We deal with the same dilemmas in our normal lives that they deal with,” Tharoor said.
The minister said “there are some things in the epic which should be done differently now”. “For example, I would like to do the story of Ekalavya differently,” he said. The
Mahabharata, said Tharoor, was full of modern-day imageries.
“The slaying of the demon Jarasandha (he was ripped apart) reminds me of the 1971 Pakistan war – when it was ripped in two different directions,” the minister said.
Dharma, feels Tharoor, is central to the Mahabharata. “For me, the best definition of dharma came from a Muslim friend. Dharma is that by which we live,” he said.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at [email protected]