A literary afternoon unfolded in the heart of New Delhi's diplomatic world on Thursday, October 22, 2026, as Congress MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor spent a couple of hours discussing his celebrated debut novel 'The Great Indian Novel' with an audience of over 75 spouses drawn from India's most rarefied foreign-policy circles.

'The Great Indian Novel' meets New Delhi's diplomatic drawing room

The event was jointly hosted by the External Affairs Spouses' Association (EASA) — comprising spouses of Ministry of External Affairs officials — and the Spouses of Heads of Mission (SHOM), the group of ambassadors' and heads of mission spouses based in New Delhi. The conversation was moderated by Aradhana Kapoor, wife of the Deputy National Security Adviser, lending the gathering a distinctly senior diplomatic flavour. A lunch hosted by Dolly Misri, wife of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, followed the discussion.

Tharoor, who described the experience as 'the satisfaction every writer seeks, of being read,' noted the pleasure of revisiting his own work through 'thoughtful questions and fresh perspectives.' Books were signed, selfies were taken — a scene that blended the literary salon with the informal warmth of Delhi's diplomatic social circuit.

The novel that rewrote how India tells its own story

First published in 1989, The Great Indian Novel is a satirical retelling of the Mahabharata mapped onto the political history of modern India — a work that established Tharoor as one of the country's most ambitious literary voices long before his political career took shape. The book draws on both classical Sanskrit epic structure and sharp postcolonial wit, making it a natural conversation piece for a multilingual, internationally minded audience of diplomatic insiders.

Tharoor has since published well over a dozen books spanning fiction, history, and political commentary, but The Great Indian Novel remains the work that defines him as a writer. For a room full of people who navigate the intersection of culture, nationhood, and international relations daily, the choice of text was anything but accidental.

Where literature and diplomacy share a table

Literary events involving Delhi's diplomatic spouse community are a recurring feature of the capital's cultural calendar — informal yet influential gatherings where ideas circulate across national boundaries and hierarchies soften over good books and good food. That the Foreign Secretary's household hosted the lunch signals the esteem with which Tharoor's literary legacy is regarded even within the country's foreign-policy establishment — a community he once served as UN Under-Secretary-General before entering Indian politics.

For a politician whose identity as a writer remains inseparable from his public persona, afternoons like this are not a departure from the work — they are part of it.