Shashi Tharoor is no scam artist. He doesn't look like a scam artist, doesn't talk like a scam artist and doesn't walk like a scam artist. Scam artists are people like the boorishly crude Madhu Koda and the unctuously cunning Ramalinga Raju to name a few scamsters from recent times, and opportunistic stock market fraudsters like Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh from yesteryears. All from different walks of life, but hey -- you can never suppress true art in any sphere. The only thing Tharoor did that went horribly wrong was to try and help a friend of his get a sweet deal as a stock-holder in a business venture he was mentoring. Compare that with Raju, the founder of the IT giant he named Satyam, after the Sanskrit word for Truth, who overnight made it a one-word oxymoron by revealing the truth (or part of it) behind its financial position. A five thousand crore scam is a scam that people would consider to be of a respectable order of magnitude. Seventy something crores, that too in the form of 'paper money', and that too accruing over several years, is peanuts, even assuming that Tharoor was after the money (which I seriously doubt -- he is too much of what Bengalis call a 'bhadralok').
In any case, you may ask, what's wrong with trying to get a friend a sweet deal? Don't we all try to help our friends? The answer to that lies in a detailed analysis (which I am not going to get into in this post) of a scandal that has been dubbed Tharoorgate. In short, it started with him mentoring a bunch of entrepreneurs who won the bid for the Kochi franchise of the IPL, in the interests of promoting cricket in his home state of Kerala. And then Tharoor managed to squeeze in a plum position for his friend, with a sweet sweat equity deal in that enterprise. And so the friend, a lady friend as it happens, ended up with a pretty decent stake in the venture, with a great upside and almost no downside, in return for helping them with branding, marketing, event management and such. All of which said lady friend has proven expertise in and is well known for, we are told. (A bit ironic, if you ask me, that we need to be told that she's famous -- wouldn't we have heard of her already?)
The nation has other far more compelling issues before it at this time. Moreover when it comes to punishing the corrupt and the deviant, there are far bigger fish we should be frying than the soft-spoken, well-meaning Tharoor, whose biggest crime -- other than a few careless tweets he threw about in a cavalier fashion some time ago (which even a nobody like me has critically blogged about), is merely the fact that he's got a soft spot for attractive women and tries to help them out in their professional pursuits.
The only good thing this scandal has done is to blow open the lid on the Pandora's box that contains all the really murky goings-on behind the closed doors of the IPL, involving some real crooks. Hopefully, we will learn more as the various authorities proceed with their investigations.
But Tharoor? Vraiment, ceci n'est pas une pipe!
And what a lady friend! The voluptuous MILF-like Sunanda Pushkar with her pouting lips and her coiffed hair qualifies to be the personification of Savita Bhabhi to any young Indian male or in fact any male. I can bet that if she were a frumpy blowsy matron, this scandal would've just blown over, assuming it took place at all. But then who are we kidding? Would she have been Tharoor's girlfriend if she were a fat, ugly, dowdy, curmudgeonly widow? Or if she were a man? Would Tharoor have worked his mentoring magic to do her (or him) a great big favor? These may be politically incorrect questions to raise, but you know the answers as well as I.
The media wasted no time in flashing pictures of Tharoor cavorting with Pushkar at art exhibitions and other social events, but the woman has remained mysteriously silent (except for issuing just a simple and short statement denying any wrong-doing and expressing outrage at being projected as a proxy for Tharoor on the board of the Kochi IPL franchisee). Either she doesn't have the balls to come out and face live news cameras, or the ever so gallant Mr Tharoor has played protector and ensured that she is shielded from such ignominy.
And that's how the luscious Ms Pushkar came to be Mr Tharoor's bete noire. For a mindset that requires men and women to sit in different sections of the hall in a wedding reception, the sex angle in this drama is a bit too much to take. She's an attractive young widow with a successful career and he's a dashing, much-accomplished man of the world, a Minister and member of the Indian parliament, twice married and now single and eligible. It's a bit imprudent of someone like him to gallivant with someone like her, and then use his good offices to promote her business, knowing what kind of a gallery of rogues he has walked into in his present job as minister and how thirsty they are for his blood. India's self-righteous right wing, already piqued by Tharoor's earlier misdemeanours and his ability to slip out of tight corners by leveraging his mastery over the art of nuanced articulation, pounced on the glib Mr Tharoor this time, grabbing him by the short and curly. The left joined in too, for good measure, looking for a good slug-fest and some more Congress-bashing.
The media wasted no time in flashing pictures of Tharoor cavorting with Pushkar at art exhibitions and other social events, but the woman has remained mysteriously silent (except for issuing just a simple and short statement denying any wrong-doing and expressing outrage at being projected as a proxy for Tharoor on the board of the Kochi IPL franchisee). Either she doesn't have the balls to come out and face live news cameras, or the ever so gallant Mr Tharoor has played protector and ensured that she is shielded from such ignominy.
And that's how the luscious Ms Pushkar came to be Mr Tharoor's bete noire. For a mindset that requires men and women to sit in different sections of the hall in a wedding reception, the sex angle in this drama is a bit too much to take. She's an attractive young widow with a successful career and he's a dashing, much-accomplished man of the world, a Minister and member of the Indian parliament, twice married and now single and eligible. It's a bit imprudent of someone like him to gallivant with someone like her, and then use his good offices to promote her business, knowing what kind of a gallery of rogues he has walked into in his present job as minister and how thirsty they are for his blood. India's self-righteous right wing, already piqued by Tharoor's earlier misdemeanours and his ability to slip out of tight corners by leveraging his mastery over the art of nuanced articulation, pounced on the glib Mr Tharoor this time, grabbing him by the short and curly. The left joined in too, for good measure, looking for a good slug-fest and some more Congress-bashing.
The nation has other far more compelling issues before it at this time. Moreover when it comes to punishing the corrupt and the deviant, there are far bigger fish we should be frying than the soft-spoken, well-meaning Tharoor, whose biggest crime -- other than a few careless tweets he threw about in a cavalier fashion some time ago (which even a nobody like me has critically blogged about), is merely the fact that he's got a soft spot for attractive women and tries to help them out in their professional pursuits.
The only good thing this scandal has done is to blow open the lid on the Pandora's box that contains all the really murky goings-on behind the closed doors of the IPL, involving some real crooks. Hopefully, we will learn more as the various authorities proceed with their investigations.
But Tharoor? Vraiment, ceci n'est pas une pipe!
