The enigma of India | Javier Moro's upcoming books on India

Javier Moro smiles, saying that seeing his effigy being burnt in front of the Spanish Embassy in India was not really pleasant, but was definitely the best promotion for The Red Sari: A Dramatized Biography of Sonia Gandhi—a book tracing Sonia Gandhi’s journey from her Italian origins through her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi and her role in Indian politics, which was finally released in India in 2015 after much controversy.

The bestselling author, who co-wrote Five Past Midnight in Bhopal—a non-fiction book detailing the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy—with his uncle Dominique Lapierre, and authored Passion India: The Story of the Spanish Princess of Kapurthala (2007), among others, is now set to write two major travel books on India. At the recently concluded Kerala Literature Festival, he said that while the first book will cover Rajasthan and parts of Uttar Pradesh, the second will explore the southern part of the country.

“I have been coming to India ever since I was 12, and the fascination with its people and places has only grown. India has not changed emotionally for me, though there have been several political and social changes,” says the author, who does not like to ‘invent’ stories and insists that real ones are far more fascinating. “You cannot even dream of devising tales that real life throws at you—who could imagine a character like the US president Trump? Of course, non-fiction must boast of fiction’s crispness and read like a novel.”

As someone who makes an annual pilgrimage to Bhopal, since he supports the Sambhavna Clinic for the victims of the gas tragedy, Moro laments that despite all the infrastructure development in his favourite country, little attention is paid to heritage. “No one seems to be interested in encouraging tourism in India. There is so much this country has to offer, but little effort is put into ensuring that centuries-old buildings are maintained,” he says. Stressing that his ‘outsider’ viewpoint lends him a peculiar objectivity and a unique perspective, he adds, “The best history books on Spanish history are written by the British. Can you negate the fantastic work done by William Dalrymple on India’s past?”