Hold On

The Sunday Washington Post reviewed Shashi Tharoor's new book, The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone: Reflections on India, the Emerging 21st-Century Power.

It's a very positive review, but suggests that

The reader would do well to start at the end, which is where the extremely funny introductory "A to Z of Being Indian" has inexplicably been placed, then dip through the beguiling biographies in Part Three, before going on to the reflective cultural essays in Parts Two and Four, and ending up with the political and economic material in Parts One and Five. Anyone familiar with the house numbering system in Delhi will find this system not only logical but apt.

I was reading this review to R, and when I reached the end, we both burst out laughing:

... it is a chaotic, joyous, occasionally exhausting and often uplifting collage. As such, it could hardly be a more fitting reflection of its subject. If Tharoor's India really is the future, the rest of us had better hold on tight.