Shashi Tharoor is a well-known scholar, journalist, and a diplomat. As we all know that recently he was in the news when he ran for the post of UN secretary general. The great Indian novel is one of his highly acclaimed work. In this novel he has compared the characters of the epic Mahabharat with the characters of India's freedom struggle and the present day politicians of free India. Tharoor's successful and intelligent effort of modernization of the epic has transmuted the original old story into the struggle for power between Indira Gandhi's congress and the old timers. The author has mixed historical facts with literary allusions. The novel as it appears is more of a social and political satire, which covers the entire Indian society from the colonial to the postcolonial days. Tharoor has followed a classical path of denunciation and at the same time he adheres to the traditional conventions of a moral satirist. The book is mainly aimed for an educated westernized Indian readership and secondly it is meant for the western audience who are interested in India. In this manner Tharoor has placed indo English literature at par with any other western literary masterpiece.
