Customer Reviews

Riot: A Love Story

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

On a recent trip to India, I picked up this book. Already familiar with Tharoor's work (The Great Indian Novel) I was rather curious with what is in it. Must say I had half expected the same righteousness many intellectuals handle the recent sectarian violence with, be it in India or Israel. But reading it I was so ashamed that I had made such an assumption. Tharoor was at his anlaytical best. The neutrality one comes to expect (but seldom finds) from a journalist, the objectivity, the in depth analysis seasoned with absloute literary brilliance.

Tharoor acknowledges the contribution (at least of the details of a real riot) from one of his real IAS friends. The amount of research that has gone into the book tells us that even if he did not get the help from his friend, he would have still delivered. The style is unique- starting with newspaper clipping of a fictitious newspaper and then swinging from narrative to narrative, some Priscilla's , some from her parents (individually) and some from the luckless Laxman.

The historical details are presented in a totally unbiassed fashion. Unbiassed as in depicting both sides of the story, but wait, there is more to it. Unbiassed means also the courage to tell a tale in a way that is well researched. The beauty of it is that each party's account seems so real, so true but yet it is at odds with the other party's version. Tharoor has achieved the unachievable, making us believe (albeit for a short while) what we do want to believe and then quckly give it up and believe the next thing with equal conviction as we move along effortlessly from one narrative to another.

Do we feel sorry for Priscilla? Was she really in the wrong place at the wrong time? Well , depends on what you call a wrong place. For her it was the right place, at least for a while. Little girl traumatized by her fathers' infidelity-do they all become idealists and hopelessly inadequate? I think not. Do we even feel sorry for laxman? I am sure some people will- but why? I served briefly in the IAS myself. Much of what he says about the cadre is true (even the fact that IPS is next best) but to think that he is representative of the elite civil servants called IAS is wrong. While they may have similar moral turpitude (some may even be able to conveniently recite Oscar Wilde), I would have thought the pillars of Indian Civil Service have on an average stronger morals than what the cowardly Laxman manages.

I have collegaues who constantly bug me to tell them more about India, more about the conflict with Pakistan, more of the Gujrat riots. I usually do not oblige them. Now I don't have to. I can just give them a copy of Riot. I gave one of them the book recently and told him, all you ever wanted to know about India is in the book. I stick by it. It is not a travel guide, but it just as well might be. A travelogue of the journey through the heart and soul of India. That little district town in the Hindi heartland IS India. Shame I can not say the same about the Ram Charan Guptas and above all Laxman.

A fascinating book. For all of you who wanted to visit India and were curious about what is it that India does to you, I have one suggestion- READ THIS BOOK.

The ill-fated romance of Priscilla Hart, a young American working at a birth control clinic in India, and Lakshman, an older, married, Indian civil servant, is an engrossing story in its own right, but it serves a much wider purpose in this ambitious and utterly fascinating novel. It provides the limited, manageable context through which the author asks questions about cultural identity and presents an impassioned plea for understanding and tolerance among cultures. Priscilla, we discover on the first page, was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant during a riot in Zalilgarh, a riot instigated by militant Hindus wanting to build a temple on the site of an ancient Muslim mosque. Many other, competing social and political forces contributed to the unrest which resulted in the riot, however, and the author clearly believes that the religious and ethnic extremism which has arisen in India in recent years has destroyed the traditional fabric of Indian society and may eventually be the undoing of the nation.

There is no narrator here to interpret the events of Priscilla's death and of the riot. Tharoor leaves all interpretation up to the reader. Through newspaper stories, entries in Priscilla's scrapbook, letters to her best friend at home and to Lakshman, transcripts of meetings with goverment officials, and a reporter's interviews with extremist religious leaders, the police, and professors (who provide the reader with crucial historical background), the passionate affair of Priscilla and Lakshman comes to life, and the complex and tumultuous forces which contribute to her death emerge.

Tharoor is a smooth and disciplined writer who respects his characters and his readers. He presents historical background clearly and allows for multiple interpretations of events, assigning no blame and making no declarations of truth. His American characters are realistic, and the contrasts of their values with those of traditional Indians are presented insightfully. Amazingly, he manages to bring to life the world of traditional India, its cultures, its ironies, its recent history, and its possible future, in fewer than 300 pages, and he does so within the context of a love story which epitomizes the incredible difficulty of separating our selves from our cultures. This is a novel which enlightens while it entertains, presenting a rational view of irrational behaviors. Mary Whipple

If we are looking for a novel in the conventional sense, we will not find it in Riot - there is no formal beginning or end, no linearity or narrative or plot or formal constructions of the genre. Even if we are prepared for the stream-of consciousness, the experimental, postmodernist, or metafiction variety, we are in for a surprise - for the 'novel' (for lack of a more appropriate nomenclature) is more of a collage that brings together many different fragments. Or one may say that the author places a jigsaw puzzle before the reader, a number of pieces that have to be put together to form a coherent whole. The pieces comprise an astonishing variety - there are diary entries, letters, memoirs, excerpts from scrapbooks and journals, transcripts of interviews, conversations overheard, entries in notebooks, journalistic reports, a handful of poems, even a birthday card and a cable.

Conspicuous by its absence is the conventional "once upon a time" story, the "dear reader..." approach, the omniscient narrator. In fact the writer is almost completely absent in the novel. "Down with the omniscient narrator. It's time for the omniscient reader, " says a character in the novel. The reader of Riot is faced with the task of groping through the evidence and unravelling the story. At times one has the uneasy feeling of being a voyeur, a peeping Tom taking a peek into a private chamber, or reading another's personal diaries or letters, or eavesdropping, or nosing into somebody else's very special, very intimate encounters. But the embarrassment is not allowed to linger as, almost immediately, there is a swing towards the impersonal, an interview conducted by an objective reporter, or the official voice of police personnel in charge, or simply a shift of perspective. All this is part of the narratorial strategy.

Yes, Tharoor is experimenting with narratology, and the experiment is undoubtedly successful! For all the various pieces of the collage are different takes on a central event - the death of Priscilla Hart. How did she die and what were the circumstances? The story is not 'told' to us. It is 'shown' through all these pieces in the collage. The reader's job is to decode the story from these scraps of information.

At the same time, what Riot seeks to present is not simply a whodunit tale, or the story of the poignant death of a visiting American. It goes beyond mere statistics, beyond the factual details of the tragedy, to reconstruct the emotional life of the woman. What was it like to be an outsider in a small, conservative township? What were her personal moments like? The idealism that brought her to that remote spot in the middle of nowhere, the passion for her job, the love interest in her life, the secret rendezvous from time to time, the uncertainty and the agony... the record of her emotional history is sketched vividly in a scrapbook that she maintains.

The paramour, a local Indian administrator who is married but finds himself helplessly involved in a relationship with the American, is also a writer of sorts and keeps his own journal. So we get two perspectives on a single relationship. The clash of cultures, the divergent viewpoints, the inability to understand the working of the other's mind, the imminent end of a foredoomed relationship - all this comes across through the personal journals of the main characters of the novel. Sure, there is passion, even love. But social pressures are far too strong for a lasting relationship. So East remains East and West remains West. Or rather, they would have remained so, had the violence not erupted, causing Priscilla's death and putting an abrupt end to the possibilities of their love story.

This is not to say that Shashi Tharoor is interested in narrating just another tragic romance. More importantly, he is concerned with history as it was lived in a particular chronotopic context. And history is nothing but truth. In an epigraph to Riot taken from Cervantes, Tharoor tells us: "History is a kind of sacred writing because truth is essential to it, and where truth is there god himself is...," thus bringing the three together - history, truth and god. Are they synonymous or is there simply a close kinship between the trinity? The novel lays bare a very personal concept of truth/history/god, presumably based on the author's private belief - that human life being a complex amalgam of paradoxes, human relationships are no less complex, and there are no certitudes, no finalities, no absolutes, no fixed beliefs, nothing good, nothing bad. It is all a matter of perspectives.

This story, like the story of Riot, is a readerly text, open to interpretation - we may read in it whatever meaning we choose. Such is the nature of truth. And of history. Tharoor's novel is about the ownership of truth and history. It presents about a dozen versions of a given situation, no single one being privileged over the other. Truth is like the blackbird that can be looked at in thirteen or more ways. If the story is told (or presented) from Lakshman's and Priscilla's points of view, it is also presented from the varying points of view of the other characters: the staunch Hindutva supporter, the Muslim activist, the police official, the grieving parents of the riot victim, the wronged wife, et. al. Their separate stories contribute towards the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle called truth or history.
"History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors," said T.S. Eliot once. Tharoor in Riot seems to be in agreement with this idea. History, he says, is not a web woven by innocent hands. The different pieces of the collage in Riot are often divergent, often contradictory accounts of the same event. Yet each has its validity. Its own truth. Like the old crone of a story tucked away in "Riot", each is beautiful!

Shashi Tharoor ( of the Great Indian Novel, Show Business fame ) experiments with the narrative form in his new novel; Riot .

It tells the story of Priscilla Hart, a 24 year old American research student , who is murdered in a communal riot in the back of the beyond district of Zalilgarh in Northern India in 1989.

Tharoor uses news paper reports, transcripts of interviews , pages from a personal scrapbook to trace the life and the events surrounding the murder of the Ms Hart.

Tharoor uses this backdrop to put the Indian brand of "secularism" in perspective and make some telling comments on the social , cultural and political fabric of the country.

Tharoor uses strong characterization....his constuction of Lakshman , the District Collector is a very solid case in point. He is founded as a typical Tamilian Brahmin bureaucrat, just, idealistic, but one who perfoms within the system. He is a closet writer and is prone to using Wilde-isms to embellish his point of views. He has his dreams , some of which take him away from the "safe" and "powerful" position of being the DC to having a dangreous sexual alliance and an imagined future with the Young american...

The narrative as mentioned earlier is fairly uniquely structured as until the end the reader is kept guessing upon what the "truth" is...

Strongly recomended as a intellectually stimulating read and perspective widening read...

Shashi Tharoor's RIOT: A LOVE STORY focuses on the mysterious killing of a young American woman during violent Hindu-Muslim riots in the village of Zalilgrah, India. Priscilla Hart, an idealistic 24-year-old volunteer for a population control non-governmental agency, was the only non-Indian victim of the riots: was she simply in the wrong place at the wrong time or did her brutal death have a premeditated motive? After hearing about Priscilla's death her estranged parents fly to India to try to uncover circumstances leading up to her demise and are joined by an American journalist stationed in New Delhi.

The format of this novel is innovative and unique; included are snippets of American newspaper articles covering Priscilla's death, interview transcripts of both Hindu and Muslim leaders in addition to local police officers, Priscilla's journal entries and letters written to a beloved friend back home, and more. As a result the reader is granted multiple viewpoints of not only the riot itself but also broader religious tensions and history of India. Slowly Priscilla's experiences in India are revealed up to the moment of her death.

I've read a fair amount of Indian Literature and this book impressed me by placing the Hindu-Muslim riots in the proper historical and religious contexts. Most books in this genre might simply refer to religious tensions and violence but they rarely progress further. I'm not sure if the authors of these other books take for granted that the reader already has a sufficient foundation or if they simply neglect to provide the appropriate background. Regardless, Shashi Tharoor did what others fail to do; he granted me a more thorough understanding of this complex subject than I ever had before. For this reason alone I give this book five stars. Highly recommend!

This is an ambitious book that succeeds. Based on several real events, it encompasses the Hindu-Muslim conflict, centuries old, the history of India itself, American naivete, corporate behavior in foreign countries, and the tragedy of people deeply emotionally ... involved in a relationship that has no future. The author leaves the reader with the hope that diverse peoples in the same country won't end up the same way. The style, with multiple points of view and "chapters" in different formats, e.g., diaries, newspaper articles, narratives, dialogues as in a play, is very difficult to pull off, and most writers don't succeed. They end up losing and confusing the reader. This author makes it work. I give a book 5 stars when it provokes thought and curiosity, tells me about something new, and makes me want to learn more. This book did it all.

Riot: Excellent edutainment

Priscilla Hart, a young American woman who suffers from the "guilty WASP" syndrome is murdered in India during a religious riot. Her murder provides the framework that allows the writer, Shashi Tharoor, to explore religion, Hindu-Muslim relations, Indian politics, western companies entering India and other related topics about the Subcontinent. This book provides a great primer to understanding these topics and allows you to springboard further into these pressing issues for India. One downside, albeit minor, is that some of the material expressed in this book (views on religion, Coca Colonization, etc.) has been covered at greater lengths, especially in Tharoor's work, India: From Midnight to Millennium.

But the book is not just an encapsulated India lesson. It is also a passionate love story (in many regards - the obvious male-female love story, parental love, love of country, etc.). Tharoor is a master of the English language and his exact words invoke a sense that you are actually there in India, enjoying the scenery and the characters that inhabit it. If you read this novel, you will not be disappointed, but rather entertained with a little enlightenment.

This book is amazing. Tharoor narrates the story through journal entries and interviews with various people. We come to understand the circumstances of a riot through the eyes of extremely different people - each with their own perspectives. Each giving a version of the "truth" and each with a valid argument. Very meaningful after Sept. 11 - helps to understand the position of Muslims in India. Tharoor is brilliant!

I looooooooooooooove this book. Shashi Tharoor is one of those rare Indian writers like Khushwant Singh, who have succesfully managed to combine fiction with history without being preachy or boring. Singh did it earlier with "Delhi" but I found that a little boring. But Tharoor has managed to convey the whole situation of the hindu-muslim riots (and more!) so effectively in his book through the murder of the innocent American Priscilla Hart. As Lucky, one of the character in the novel says, Tharoor has written a book "that's like an encyclopaedia, you can pick up any chapter at random & get to know more about the plot, or less depending on how much you've read before. I haven't read Tharoor's earlier book "The great Indian novel" yet, but plan to do so ASAP after reading "riot".

Two-startling thumbs up!

Breathtaking in its originality (i dont think anyone has used such an extarordinariy narrative form before), moving in its insights, brilliant in its plotting, and magnificent in its style (with the best sex scenes ever found in Indian literature), Shashi Tharoor has written a tremendously fast-paced and entertaining novel that engages, at the same time, with the most important issues facing India today. I know its a cliche, but I could not put it down. A real masterpiece from an author who seems to have no limit to his range and versatility. I am definitely going to re-read it this weekend because it is clear there are even more nuahnces and insights I can glean from a second re-reading. As an Indian I am proud our countrry has produced a wolrd-class author of this quality.