Jaipur lit festival: Literature conveys more meaning than any other art, says Shashi Tharoor

A work of literature has something “special” to offer and conveys more meaning than other art forms such as a painting or a piece of music, believes renowned writer and politician Shashi Tharoor.

Tharoor, who has authored 15 best selling books of fiction and non-fiction, said there was no department of life, public or private, which was not effectively influenced by literature.

“Good literature is the attempt to capture the human condition in a way that can be shared with other people and understand it. I believe every policy, every public political issue is either reflected in people depicted in literature or is influenced by reader’s awareness,” he told in an interview.

The Congress MP, who is attending the Jaipur Literature Festival in Jaipur, Rajasthan, feels that a painting cannot convey as much as a book.

“It is difficult to imagine that a piece of music alone can convey as much as a passionate or polemical work of literature. I think a work of literature has something special to offer, more details to offer than any other single piece of art form,” he said.

The 60-year-old author, who is holding strong, both to his words and his charm, said an ideal writing situation was when nothing mattered more than the writing itself.

“The ideal writing situation is when you are so completely immersed in what you are writing that other things like your dressing, your shaving, your eating become totally irrelevant.  When I wrote ‘An Era of Darkness’, it was very much like that,” Tharoor said.

Admired for his great learning, Tharoor said he was an “indiscriminate” reader and reads at least a dozen books a year.

“I’m an indiscriminate reader but not a copious one. I still manage to read at least a dozen books a year, but that is nothing compared to what I would have have been able to.

“Before my children were born, my wife and I were very easily reading four to five books a month,” he said.