‘Wonderland of Words’: Shashi Tharoor’s ‘seriously funny’ book on the quirks of the English language

I shall not be sorry if this review contains gratuitous grandiloquence or unrestrained zealousness, even at the risk of appearing sesquipedalian – these are mere symptoms of having devoured Shashi Tharoor’s Wonderland of Words. Let me dive into this lexical labyrinth and emerge with a review that’s hopefully) as witty as Tharoor’s wordsmithery (of course, I coined that word!).

Whose English is it anyway?

As an Indian, I never realised the quirks of “Indian English” until Tharoor made me fall off of my chair laughing. Whenever I heard someone say: He is my “real” brother, What is your “good” name?, Looking for a “homely” bride, I don’t eat “non-vegetarian” and so on; I never raised my eyebrows until now. Indians “pass out” from a school when people everywhere else pass out after partying too hard. Indians watch a “picture” when they are actually watching a movie. This is only one chapter of many and I’m already getting carried away, let me not “eat your head” now!

And there are words that should be adopted by English. Like “tsundoku” in Japanese – which means a growing pile of unread books. My tsundoku is tsundokuing indeed! The chapter about newspaper headlines gone wrong is by far one of the most...

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