Why Shashi Tharoor has written a book of aphorisms along with this friend Joseph Zacharias

I first met Joseph Zacharias when I set up an academy of business communication in Thiruvananthapuram shortly after leaving the United Nations in 2007. The academy was intended to respond to a perceived need for improving spoken English and comprehension skills amongst otherwise well-educated Malayalis whose mastery of English was often confined to the written word. In our search for competent speakers of the language who could teach it in a practical way, we met Joseph, who had retired prematurely from government service in Delhi and was available in the Kerala capital. Slim, with a gleaming brown dome, of indeterminate age, wearing a perpetually quizzical look and a general air of inscrutability, he had the appearance of an overgrown gnome. There was something about Joseph that immediately arrested the attention of those who met him. We hired him instantly, and he and I hit it off extremely well.

The academy, for various reasons, turned out to be short-lived, but the relationship with Joseph endured. I was struck by his intelligence, his dry wit, and his evident wisdom on subjects that ranged well beyond the mundane matter of expressing oneself effectively in English. When I was elected Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, I asked him whether he would join my staff. For five years during my first term (2009–14), Joseph served loyally and effectively, handling routine correspondence and tackling unusual problems that were anything but routine.

He regaled his colleagues in the office with his passing comments, often couched in a coruscating cynicism about the “system” that not everyone easily understood. (He would later claim that he had deliberately kept one part of his brain from ‘growing up’, and it was from there that he generated his quirkiest thoughts.) On the side, he began peppering me with private emails, whose themes and treatment ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, offering me his observations on politics, society, crime, music, religion, spirituality, sport – and Kerala in all its exhilarating and maddening ways. When he moved on thereafter to the somewhat eccentric project of building himself a cottage in the hills where he and his wife could cultivate fruits and vegetables in the wild, we stayed in touch.

His ideas and insights continued to come, sometimes erratically because of internet challenges in the uplands, but always insightful and stimulating. I told Joseph that one day he should compile the decade and a half of advice he had given me into a book whose wit and wisdom would prove illuminating for generations yet to come. He resisted the temptation, or perhaps he was never tempted.

Instead, last year, he offered me a manuscript that he had somewhat randomly put together, of aphorisms he had thought up. I was instantly captivated, and offered them to my publisher, David Davidar of Aleph, who years earlier had suggested that I write a book of aphorisms myself, for which I had never found the time. David came back to say that, in his view, half of Joseph’s scattershot thoughts were brilliant and the other half unpublishable. He returned to his original idea – would I be willing to collaborate with Joseph, retain the aphorisms he felt would work, and write the other half of the book?

I immediately turned to Joseph—it was his project, after all, and he was fully entitled to withdraw his manuscript and submit it elsewhere, unchanged. But he leapt at the idea with delight, and gave me a free hand to revise, rework, and add to his original draft. I will always be grateful for his complete trust in me. An aphorism is a concise statement or observation that expresses a general truth, principle, or nugget of wisdom, ideally in a memorable or witty manner. Aphorisms must be short, since they are intended to convey a profound or insightful idea with brevity, clarity, and wit. Sometimes aphorisms embody maxims, concise statements of a general principle or rule of conduct that serve as practical guidelines or advice for behaviour or decision-making.

As a result, various philosophers expressed themselves in aphorisms, most famously the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (4 BCE–65 CE), who used aphorisms to explore themes of ethics, virtue, and human nature; the French writer and moralist François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80), who titled his collection of aphorisms Maxims and delved into human behaviour, self-interest, and the complexities of social relationships; the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), famed for asking “Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?”, who employed the aphoristic style extensively to interrogate morality, truth, and the nature of existence; and the Irish writer and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), whose literary works are filled with memorable and often humorous aphorisms about society, art, and human nature.

Those are the gold standard, of course, but there have been numerous other individuals throughout history who have contributed to the development of aphoristic literature – most recently Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose book of aphorisms, The Bed of Procrustes, published in 2010, included gems like “True wealth is the ability to fully experience life,” and “If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated.”

So Joseph and I were walking gingerly on well-trodden ground. We sought to come up with insights from our own lived experiences that were true for us and, as far as we were aware, had not been expressed by anyone else before – or, at least, not in quite the same way. It took me several months to find the time for the reflection and thoughtful introspection that this process required, but earlier this year I came up with a manuscript I felt we could offer David. My own aphorisms included observations culled from years of writings and speeches, but also ideas I had mulled over but not actually put into words before. Together with Joseph’s wholly original aphorisms, the pair of us have produced a volume we can both contentedly stand behind.

The inestimable David Davidar was, as usual, indispensable to the project, both by applying his rigorous editorial judgement on which aphorisms to delete or retain, and in editing some of them to the pithy cogency that marks the successful aphorism. It was he who changed Joseph’s and my alphabetical format into a series of thematic chapters, reorganised the aphorisms appropriately, and commissioned the illustrations that adorn this book. The excellent team at Aleph, led by Aienla Ozukum, has brought this book to press. I have always found Aienla an unobtrusive yet superbly competent editor to work with, and am grateful for her stewardship of the project. Bena Sareen has, as usual, done a splendid job on the cover, and this volume would not be what it is without Priya Kuriyan’s elegant and whimsical illustrations.

Joseph and I are both in our mid-sixties; we have seen much of life, been moved and hardened by our experiences, and acquired some insights we believe might be useful to pass on. We have no illusion that we have produced a masterpiece for the ages. But if something of the wisdom that has come our way pushes open a window in a reader’s mind and lets some light in, this book will have served its purpose.

Excerpted with permission from Introduction to The Less You Preach, The More You Learn: Aphorisms for Our Age, Shashi Tharoor and Joseph Zacharias, illustrated by Priya Kuriyan, Aleph Book Company.