Shoba Tharoor Srinivasan’s book, ‘Good Innings: The Extraordinary, Ordinary Life of Lily Tharoor’, celebrates her mother

The author says the book is a tribute to a strong matriarch

Shoba Tharoor Srinivasan was not sure whether she wanted to write a book when she was requested by Penguin to write a biography of her mother, Lily Tharoor. “True, my mother has led an unusual and fascinating life. Even at the age of 80 she renewed her driving license and drove her car until just a few years ago. She has travelled, has had her share of tragedies, travails and triumphs… but did we want to put it down in a book?”

Eventually, persuaded by the publishers and encouraged by her brother, Shashi Tharoor, author and Member of Parliament, she got around to thinking what she would want to include in a book about her mother.

Good Innings: The Extraordinary, Ordinary Life of Lily Tharoor, to be published on May 8 (Mother’s Day), is not a mere biography. In Thiruvanathapuram for a short break, the prolific author and voice artiste said, the book, is “a hybrid text, part memoir, part self-help”. It has Shobha reflecting on her mother and the many ways in which she has influenced her three children and many other people by her curiosity, her drive, and her can-do spirit.

“I did wonder how I could share stories about my mother in a way that was interesting for readers. My mother claims that she’s quite ordinary, that she hasn’t “invented anything.” The publishers felt that the story of a spirited matriarch who lived and learned in so many parts of the country and the world, and raised “three interesting children” would be inspiring to others.”

Shobha agreed to write the book but it would not be a conventional biography. “However, every chapter is about a specific period in her life and the 13 chapters in the book take the reader from Kollengode where she was born, to her present life in Delhi with her son. The book is drawn from memories but I mix up the narrative so that we hear Lilly’s voice in the first person opening of each chapter.”

Each chapter begins with an aphorism that illuminates the purpose of the chapter that follows. The chapter concludes in third person and presents a take-away.

Shashi Tharoor has written the prologue and Ragini, Shobha’s daughter, has written the epilogue. “Ragini, a professor of English, is my mother’s only granddaughter and the grandchild who has spent the most time in conversations with my mother.”