Apropos of Fairplay Award, Anyone? (Apr 26), why is Shashi Tharoor hated so by his partymen and the media? You too pronounced him guilty without getting a single quote from the man. In this state of affairs, the best thing for him to do would be to write a tell-all book. And that will open up a can of worms which could then be grist for another book, canny writer that Tharoor is.
Rashesh Joshi, Veraval, Saurashtra
A lot of these Tharoor-haters strike me as frustrated 50-year-old retired professors/sociologists/nerds in fluorescent windcheaters, lonely-problem-drinkers etc who hate anyone remotely successful. Having read Outlook for the last few years (Dad subscribes), I can safely say this is your core reader base. Tharoor doesn’t have a caste/religious/ regional votebank and hence is easily dispensable. And those 7.5 lakh Twitter ‘followers’ aren’t going to burn effigies or damage public property. If they were so inclined, this story would have ended differently.
Aaditya Raghavan, Bangalore
Tharoor was one of the very few politicos who held some hope that all is not lost in India. With his resignation, the idea of a changed India, at least for me, is lost. Looks like you should either be a public ‘saint’ (take A.K. Antony, Manmohan Singh, PC etc) or corrupt to be successful in Indian politics.
AJ, Melbourne
An honest, decent, articulate minister is asked to quit but the sleaze kings continue to rule the roost. Like A. Raja, the telecom king, who allegedly caused a Rs 20,000-crore loss to the nation.
Rajendran Balakrishnan, Manama, Bahrain
What a pity that a man of such regard should become the subject of the media’s madness. If only Tharoor had stuck to the old Sanskrit proverb, “Mauna kalaka nasti (When you are silent, there are no quarrels).”
Uma Nair, Delhi
Tharoor was a juicy bone before two barking canines, the politicos and the media.
J.V. Reddy, Nellore
Why is there so much brouhaha over the IPL when we have another global Indian brand, Bollywood, that has all the same ingredients: a so-called entertainment value that caters to the masses, sleaze, cronyism, proxy fronts, unaccounted money, illegal financing, politics, and refusal to be governed by best practices.
Nilesh Korgaokar, New Delhi
Mr Tharoor, you were a member of the St Stephen’s Shakespeare Club and have subconsciously acquired the tragic flaw of those Shakespearean heroes; yours, of course, being the inability to imbibe the Congress culture that demands not candour but crafty hypocrisy, not intellectual liberty but mind-debilitating subordination, not linguistic sophistication but a voice that sings hosannas to the czars and czarinas!
S.M. Kompella, on e-mail
Perhaps Tharoor felt his command over the English language would stand him in good stead here too. Remember how he began explaining the meaning of the word ‘interlocutor’ to us, after his faux pas regarding Saudi Arabia’s role in India-Pak affairs.
Sakshi Singh, Ahmedabad
The man aspired to be the UN secretary-general but couldn’t even hold down the post of a junior minister.
M. Rama Krishna, Kakinada
The Sins of Shashi Tharoor? You call these sins? Compared to the scum that has floated to the top of Indian politics, all Tharoor is guilty of is being outspoken in a culture that doesn’t value it.
Arjun Inamdar, Mumbai
In the picture of Tharoor and Modi, your caption reads, ‘Just a year back, Tharoor was seen with Modi at an IPL match at Ferozeshah Kotla’. The photograph is actually taken during IPL 2010, which is evident from the badges and the ribbon on Modi’s IPL id-card.
Sandip Sarkar, on e-mail
In ‘Tweetharoor’, you give the man a thumbs-down for being “unwilling to adapt to Congress culture”. Shouldn’t that actually be a thumbs-up?
Deepak Bellur, Bangalore
In spite of being a political novice, Tharoor was given a ministership even as Congress veterans waited at the gate. He mucked up his chance.
V.S. Sankaran, on e-mail
Tharoor had to go due to his irreverence towards the holy cows of Indian politics. To his misfortune, he had an equally egoistic adversary, also made a celebrity by a fawning media.
G. Vijayaraghavan, on e-mail
Tharoor’s bad luck was that Lalit Modi was an adversary who could outdo him in the gunfight in the IPL corral.
G.S. Rao, Bangalore
It’s good that Tharoor and Modi are out. The excessive hype around IPL has jacked up its extremely fragile brand value—long on showbiz, short on substance. The way things are shaping up, who knows how long the IPL will survive.
S.R. Gadicherla, Bangalore
Let’s abolish this T20 from the annals of cricketing books and reinstate the old game on the pedestal it stood and where it belongs. Let those scamsters who made a mockery of the game search for other avenues.
Saurabh Awasthi, Kanpur
Tharoor, Modi, they are all frauds...doesn’t matter if they worked for the UN or were dealing drugs in the past.
Srinivasan, Glasgow
An old and ribald response to Tharoor’s “We will be the change” tweet—“No pleasure wi’out pain, said the monkey to the porcupine.”
K. Vijayan, Chennai
My (cattle class) advice to Tharoor is, “Don’t cry over spilt milk, wake up in a happy mooood, the grass is green on the other side, turn the udder cheek and moooo-ve on.”
Spindoc, Somerset, US
When I read about his old slogan “Shashi Tharoor, jitega zaroor” on Sunday morning, I was thinking “Shashi Tharoor, jayega zaroor” and sure enough he resigned that night. As a compulsive tweeter, he should have sent this one too, “Shashi Tharoor, chala gaya huzoor.”
Sanjive Arora, Mumbai
