Secret Diary 2019

"Initially, I defended the emergency stating that what Mrs Gandhi had done wasn't really all that bad"

Secret Diary of Shashi Tharoor — Part 2

Vishal Koul

At St Stephen’s College, I was keen on studying history than economics, and I am grateful to my father who was broad-minded enough to say, ‘do what you want’. College was a lot of fun except for the initial periods of ragging, which were awful. During my stay at the campus, my mother had ordered a special kind of milk to be delivered every morning to my room. There was a senior across the corridor who would impound that milk and force me to drink when it turned sour. I once wrote an article in an in-house magazine under the pseudonym Ashok Banjara to highlight the ragging issue. However, a lot of seniors who had read my articles earlier, knew my style of writing. So, whenever Ashok Banjara wrote an article against ragging, I would end up getting ragged!