Chandrahas Choudhury on Shashi Tharoor's modesty

It is a pleasure reading anything that Chandrahas Choudhury writes, and I am eagerly waiting to read his novel, Arzee. I suspect that Chandrahas' writings on Shashi Tharoor will find their rightful place among the great comic, satirical utterances of the twenty-first century. Here is Chandrahas on Tharoor's contribution to a collection of essays on Salman Rushdie. Tharoor's prose, Chandrahas tells us:

almost always conveys the impression of someone standing in front of a mirror. He allows himself precisely one good, insightful paragraph about Rushdie before he wanders off into a consideration of the main emphasis of Rushdie’s work. What is that emphasis? “[A]s I have written in my book India: From Midnight to the Millennium,” declares Tharoor, “the singular thing about India is that you can only speak of it in the plural.” The suggestion is that Rushdie and Tharoor have been working on parallel lines all their lives, celebrating India’s teeming pluralism and excoriating its chauvinists of all stripes. “My India, like Salman Rushdie’s, has room enough for everyone,” declares Tharoor fatuously. The incredible thing is that readers should be expected to pay good money to discover this congruence.

I have stopped laughing just long enough to direct you to Chandrahas' review of Tharoor's book, The Elephant, The Tiger and the Cellphone, Here it is: "Shashi Tharoor, Banally in Love With India". Enjoy.