Writer's Perspective: Process, Geography, and Language

Writers on Writing: Shashi Tharoor and “Expanding Boundaries with a Colonial Legacy”

Shashi Tharoor’s perspective on the writing process emerges from the concepts of geography and language, of authenticity and readership. Writing about India in English has its claims to inauthenticity which Tharoor debunks. Tharoor states the circumstances around a writer should not affect the reader. I disagree.  I think the writing process is just as much about the reader as it is for the writer. When an artist paints, there is an end audience in mind, but what about painting for art’s sake? What about writing for writing’s sake? Surely formats such as stream of consciousness were founded in the act of letting writing loose and are about the verb side of writing rather than the noun side. Well-balanced writers will write with the writer and the reader in mind, but there is certainly room for those who tip the scales on either side. Writing just as a form of expression has its merits as does someone who thinks nothing of themselves and only of their audience.

Tharoor states he writes in English about India, a language mastered only by about 2 percent of the Indian population. Tharoor’s United Nations background lends him a blended cultural experience and claims his most natural state is precisely what he writes from – an Indian writing in English. He cites colonialism for the emergence of English as his preferred language as well as other colonial developments. He states the time has passed for concern about points in colonialism and that many Indians feel natural in speaking and writing in English. Surely this state of mind is the truest form as it is the most honest and most natural. English is also less biased in writing about India because “English expresses that diversity better than any Indian language precisely because it is not rooted in any one region of my vast country” (Tharoor, 2001, para. 10). The lack of regional language in writing about India makes it more universal and able to be described in greater truth.

Given the ability to translate texts, he feels the act of writing in a particular language is not important. “Inevitably the English language fundamentally affects the content of each book, but it does not determine the audience of the writer; as long as translations exist, language is a vehicle, not a destination” (Tharoor, 2001, para. 13).

Ultimately, writing from whichever space is the truest and most natural for the writer should be the frame in which the best texts emerge. Writing is also of the heart. He states, “I have never been much of a literary theoretician — I always felt that for a writer to study literature at university would be like learning about girls at medical school” Tharoor, 2001, para. 6). There is something organic about writing that cannot always be dissected and I share this sentiment. Lastly, Tharoor feels “addresses don't matter, because writers really live inside their heads and on the page, and geography is merely a circumstance” (Tharoor, 2001, para. 17). Shared with this sense of “non-location” is the realm of new and social media. Regardless of the geographical space in which audiences' read, the principles remain the same in weighing the writer and the reader. From this course it is clear journalists have conscious codes of conduct to follow and police their own ethical guidelines which do reach unto social media -- another arena devoid of geographical boundaries. 

References

Tharoor, Shashi. (2001). “Expanding Boundaries with a Colonial Legacy.” The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/books/30THAR.html?pagewanted=1

“Writers on Writing.” (2009). The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/writers.html