I had to write: When Shashi Tharoor sought ‘licence to write’ during UN stint

During his early days at the United Nations in the 1970s, a young Shashi Tharoor reached out to the chief of personnel seeking a “licence to write” like the famous fictional spy James Bond’s “licence to kill”. Tharoor, known as a “wordsmith” among netizens and literati for his vocabulary that more often than not leaves people looking for a dictionary, started writing before he turned a teenager.

The Congress MP published his first story at the age of 10 in an Indian English magazine. One of his early novels about an Anglo-Indian fighter pilot in World War II was serialised in a newspaper before he turned 11.

Speaking at the launch of his latest book, “The Wonderland of Words”, on Friday, Tharoor shared his love for the written word and how he managed to continue writing at the UN, which has a “strict code of conduct for its staff”.

“I got into this habit of writing and then I was being published in all these Indian magazines and newspapers throughout my childhood. The bug never left me. I often quoted George Bernard Shaw’s famous line, ‘I write for the same reason a cow gives milk’. You know it’s inside me, it’s got to come out. So in that sense, I had to write,” he said.

After joining the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva in 1978 as a staff member, he reached out to the chief of personnel seeking permission for “any external activities”.

“So, I went to make a case to the chief of personnel that if people can play cricket on weekends or collect butterflies for that matter or stamps, why can’t I write? So, I was told yes, you can be given permission to write provided you don’t offend any member states. That was the only condition. So, I got that permission,” the 68-year-old Thiruvananthapuram MP said.

“I used to joke that just as James Bond had a licence to kill, I have a licence to write and so I would have to get that permission renewed every year,” he said. During his career at the UN till 2007, Tharoor wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction books including “Reasons of State”, “The Great Indian Novel”, “The Five Dollar Smile and Other Stories”, and “India: From Midnight to the Millennium”.

According to Tharoor, his earlier edition carried a rather unusual disclaimer. “In the earlier editions of my books published while I was still in the UN, I must be the only novelist in the history of fiction who has a disclaimer on the copyright page saying that though the author is an official fission of the United Nations, none of the opinions expressed by the characters in this book are to be construed as those of the author in his official capacity,” Tharoor said. “So, I just kept writing,” he said. In his latest book, “The Wonderland of Words”, published by Aleph Book Company, Tharoor explores “words, concepts, and particularities that constitute the sublime wonderland of the English language” in 101 essays.