Secret Diary 2019

"I was forced to know about my caste, thanks to a boy named Rishi Kapoor"

Secret Diary of Shashi Tharoor

  • I owe my success to Persistence and hardwork
  • Your mentor Kofi Annan
  • Your strongest belief In the idea of India that encapsulates diversity, pluralism, democracy and communal harmony
  • Most memorable moment Several, but if I were to pick one, it would be the birth of my twins
  • Worst moment Also the birth of my twins. They were premature, had developed jaundice and one of them stopped breathing for a few seconds. And the other would be the loss of my father
  • Your sounding board My father
  • Your advice to your kids Never give up if anything is worth doing, and do it well!
  • Your favourite quote “May be there’s no wrong place and no wrong time. This is where we are and the only time we have. Maybe it’s where we are meant to be.”
  • Best days of your life With my kids - the only unalloyed joy I have has been watching them grow up
  • Your favourite book and author I read too much to have any favourite, but to name one, it will be The Mahabharata. The favourite author from my childhood is PG Wodehouse
  • Best advice you ever got The advice from my uncle: “Make friends before you need them”

He was my hero. Of late, I wake up conscious to the feeling that my dad never saw his 64th birthday. I turn 64 next year. He was only 26 when I was born, and his demise, when I was 37, was sudden. I lost not just a father, but also a close friend, somebody whom I could share everything in my life with, and who made me the person I am. A lot of my self-confidence is rooted in my father’s faith — his enormous respect for my writing and my intellectual ability. Though a strict disciplinarian who was liberal with his use of hands, he did confess to me later in life that he didn’t know any better, because that’s the way he was brought up.

I was a precocious child who raced through school, college and got his PhD by 22. In some sense, it was a hectic adolescence. I was born in London, where my father was a manager of ‘The Statesman’, at a time (1956) when all the managers in India were Englishmen. He had been to the UK as a student and stayed on to work for a couple of publications as their representative, selling space to British companies operating in India. He always wanted to come back, and luckily, got the opportunity when an Englishman retired in Bombay.

I was two-and-a-half years old when we shifted to the city. But my initial schooling was an abortive stint at a boarding school, Montfort, near Salem in Tamil Nadu. I had developed severe bronchitis and was spending a lot of time with the infirmary at the school. Even though I missed some exams, I still came third that year and was due to move a grade higher. But the school management wrote to my father, “This boy should be with his parents as he’s too young to do deal with life on his own”. Campion, the school in Bombay that I was being admitted to, refused to take a six-year-old into class IV. So, I still have the stigma of having repeated a year despite faring well!

***

I had a great time at Campion though, as the school was very strong in extra-curriculars with a good theatre tradition. There’s one incident from my theatre days that’s etched in my memory — when I was forced to know about my caste, thanks to a boy named Rishi Kapoor, the youngest son of Raj Kapoor.

I had acted, recited a humorous poem and MC’ed my class’ efforts to generous applause, which could have got the younger Kapoor either intrigued or disconcerted, for he sought me out the next morning. “Tharoor,” the burly Rishi asked me at the head of the steps near the toilet, “what caste are you?” “I…I don’t know,” I stammered. My father, who never mentioned anyone’s religion, let alone caste, had not bothered to enlighten me on such matters. “You don’t know?” he said in astonishment. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Everybody knows their own caste.” I confessed I didn’t. “You mean you’re not a Brahmin?” He never spoke to me again in school. That evening, I went home and asked my parents, whose liberality had left me in such ignorance. My father had dropped his caste name during his days at Victoria College (Palakkad, Kerala) and since then never ever mentioned his caste or religion.

It’s only later did I realise that I had Parsi, Christian, Muslim and Sikh friends. There was this boy, probably among the very privileged few in Bombay to have a cassette tape recorder in his Fiat car; that’s how I thought of people, and not by their religion. As it turned out, he was a Muslim. So, it is to Kapoor that I owe my first lesson about my genealogical past of being a Nair!

Incidentally, my discovery of caste is a thinly fictionalised account of what I saw growing up in life, in my book ‘India: From Midnight to The Millennium’. My parents were very devout, and their idea of a good holiday was either taking me and my two sisters to a pilgrimage or to their ancestral homes!

I still remember vividly, when we used to play cricket and football, a kid would sit on the wall watching us. On asking my uncle why we don’t invite him to play, he would say, “you don’t understand anything.” Only later was I told that he was from a caste known as Ezhava, largely comprising people from the farming community, and were considered as untouchables. One day, the boy caught the ball and returned it to us. My friends shouted at him for doing so; they would rather have gone over the wall to pick it up, than play with the ball he had ‘contaminated’! On one occasion, when our ball fell into a well, the boy’s offer to help was rudely turned down. A few years later, the kid began playing with us, but he was still not invited into the house. A year later, he was invited into the house, but was not invited to eat with us, or in the kitchen. Over the next couple of years, the boy was offered food, but he still couldn’t sit alongside us on a table but had to sit on the floor and eat on a plantain leaf. And then, a few years later, the same kid began walking in and out of our house with complete freedom, going into the kitchen, talking in familiar terms to others. I took this story as a metaphor for Kerala’s changing social evolution and how the progressive movement managed to rid people of their prejudices against other castes.

***

My rendezvous with books began, thanks to my ailment. Since I was an asthmatic and would often be bed-ridden, I turned into a voracious reader. My taste ranged from the humour of PG Wodehouse — who was a sheer delight for his use of language, incredibly complex and clever plotting — including eastern European and Russian classics, all the way up to traditional tales such as the “Mahabharata.”

At the age of six, I wrote my first story — very much inspired by western books I was reading, such as Enid Blyton and Biggles. My parents did me a great favour by taking that seriously and got my writings typed up and circulated them among friends. At an absurdly young age, I began thinking of myself as a writer. Thanks to dad, when I was 10, my first short story appeared in print, in a Sunday paper in Bombay, called ‘Bharat Jyoti’, owned by ‘The Free Press Journal (FPJ)’. The story was inspired by the American Civil War that divided the country into two, and I wrote two versions of that story. The version published in the FPJ was about a father, a Union general, who kills his son, a confederate soldier. I, subsequently, rewrote the story around the time that the Tamil language riots broke out, wherein an IPS officer takes action against his son, who is one of the protestors.

The thrill of seeing your name in print is like the first bite of chocolate. You want to do it again. And that’s really what happened with my writing; the bug bit me very early.

***

My father got transferred to Calcutta to head advertising for the entire group. It was a big promotion, and again, a happy change for me, because of the three years of high school in St Xavier’s, Calcutta. It was unquestionably egalitarian and, in my day, the best school in the city, particularly in terms of its intellectual rigour.

They had something called extempore speech — you get a topic, often drawn out of a hat or a bowl, get locked up in a room for five minutes and then you had to speak extempore without any preparation. The school had a Good Conduct Medal, the only occasion when students could get to vote, and I was proud to win the citation in class IX. My other achievement from the school is when the Father, or the school principal, asked me to draft his speech for the school equivalent of a convocation. I still remember the day: it was in class X and I took the text I had given him to see how much of it had been retained. Realising that 90% of what he spoke was what I had written made me feel terribly confident, because here I was, a 14-year-old, writing a speech for a man in his 50s!

Another interesting experience was when I was made the editor of the school magazine, and I went through the spasm of discovering rationality in atheism. So, I wrote an essay on why God does not exist. A senior Father did not allow it to be published, but he must have talked about it. That’s because in our moral science class, there was a very brilliant young priest in his mid-20s, Cyril Desbruslais, who in reaction to my argument delivered one of the most clever, well-argued and cogent lectures, and of course, it went above the heads of most of the rest of class. But I knew it was intended for me, giving epistemological argument for the existence of God. I’ve never forgotten that, it kind of shook my faith in absolute rationalism and atheism. To some degree, I ended up in the position where Pascal had been as well. Pascal’s wager essentially argues that, between the options of believing and not believing in God, you’re better off believing. I’m increasingly convinced that the world has more mysteries than science. I gave up on my scepticism, and I think, it’s a part of normal evolution that I’m sure others have gone through.

Around the same time, 1969, Calcutta was going through a major upheaval, when the political establishment was reverberating with communist slogans. I became rather right of Centre in terms of my political philosophy. But my writing continued. Just before my 11th birthday, my first collection of a six series article was published in ‘The Statesman’. The article was completely imitative of the Biggles. I’ve always believed that no one can teach you to write. You teach yourself by reading extensively, seeing what works in terms of style, and what naturally comes to you.

Growing up in Kolkata had infused my interest in history as a subject and I wanted to study at Presidency College, but unfortunately, the vice chancellor of Calcutta University was murdered. The turn of events marred by student protests, demonstrations and student fights disrupted the schedule of exams. Suddenly, this famous university precipitously declined amid all the violence, forcing me to move to Delhi.

***

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 JNU’s 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!

Two years later when I became the university president, I did something that many seniors would never forgive me for — shortening the ragging period from six weeks to three weeks. As a result, a lot of freshers got saved from ragging when I was president.

As my term drew to a close, my parents wanted me to make the switch to IIM. They said, “At least take the entrance exams because that’s a way to make some real money in this world.” I managed to get into both the IIMs — Calcutta and Ahmedabad, topping the list in one and coming second in the other.

Though my parents weren’t too happy about my inclination, thanks to a full scholarship, I got through to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, Massachusetts; its degree certificate lists both Tufts and Harvard. It’s an autonomous school where I completed my MA, Masters in Law and Diplomacy, and then a PhD.

In an era of forex curbs, I left Indian shores with $8 in my pocket, and my scholarship was exactly calibrated towards my tuition, room and boarding charges. After paying my tuition and room charges, I was left with $1,000 and the meal plan of eating three meals a day at the campus would have consumed all of it. So, I went onto one meal a day, occasionally had a second meal when I could afford to. I even gave up shaving so I could save money!

Being a vegan meant all I would get were salads. Though I detested it then, I’ve since developed a taste for it. But in those days, I felt what’s the point of eating leaves for a meal. I was missing my Indian spicy food. In the second year, I moved into a rented accommodation with two friends. But the problem was that I’d never learnt to cook, and like any typical Indian son, the only time I would enter the kitchen was to ask when food would be ready! But my dad eased the pain for me by sending me a step-by-step instruction through post on how to prepare my favourite dish, ‘Urulakazhanga Uperi’, made of potatoes sauteed in a chilli-onion paste. It was a great learning phase, and an extraordinary experience indeed.

At the university, I structured my courses in a way that I would be eligible to write my PhD. Since I had won the best student award at Fletcher, I applied for an academic condition under which I would take the oral exams in order to qualify for my PhD. They are normally two separate exams separated by six months to a year. But one of my professors told me, “Listen, I don’t know why you’re doing this, because I’m going to fail you.” I asked, “Why? You’ve given me an A in all my papers.” He said, “Because nobody can pass a PhD oral without studying six months for it.” My heart sank, but I thought I’d take a chance, because I was also terrified of running out of scholarship money — as it is, I had spent one year living on one meal a day! I managed to get a distinction from the very professor who was to fail me, and I finally got my permission to pursue the PhD.

The thesis was on a theory called ‘political development’ — a popular theory then, but completely out of fashion now. It was basically being used by American political scientists to trace the evolution of developing country policies towards what the Americans approved as their model.

I took those theories and applied them to foreign policy, particularly to the development of personnel institutions and practices in the making of Indian foreign policy during Indira Gandhi’s first term in 1966–77. I was incredibly lucky, as she lost the election in March ’77. She was not willing to talk to journalists but gave me a two-hour long interview right after she lost. I had met her once before, when I was president of the students’ union society of St Stephen’s College.

Interestingly, around the same time I met Aroon Purie, who had just started ‘India Today’. He was like: “Gosh, no one can get an interview with Indira! Can you publish it?” Out of a sense of ethics, I telephoned Mrs Gandhi and sought her approval. She replied, “You told me you were writing a book?” I replied, “Ma’am, I said I am writing a PhD thesis, which I hope, will become a book one day. But I thought, in the meantime…” She said, “No, this is what I’ve given you permission for.”

Initially, I defended the emergency stating that what Mrs Gandhi had done wasn’t really all that bad, because its only victims were people like me — who could publish articles or agitate politically and make speeches and statements — but that the real beneficiaries were the common men. But I was to be disillusioned very soon.

My initial ambition was to take the foreign service examination in India. But what put me off was when the Indian embassy in Chicago refused to renew the passport of an Indian student who had spoken out against the emergency. I couldn’t believe that such a thing could even be possible in India that I had known, grown up in, cherished and valued. But then fate would work in a queer way.

***

It was in Calcutta during the summer of ’75 that I had first met Virendra Dayal, a UN official from the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who was impressed with my writing in ‘The Statesman’. He was on a family holiday to Calcutta and through a common acquaintance, I got to meet him at a house party. He took me aside for a chat and later told me, “When you come to New York (NY), do look me up.”

It was luck or destiny that during my last term at Fletcher I hitched on to a ride with a couple of friends to NY and got a chance to meet Dayal at the delegates lounge of the UN office. By the end of the conversation, he asked me, whether I had thought of applying to the UN. Though he was not part of the interview process, his senior officers did write a favourable report that led me to Geneva for the second round of interview. By the time I’d gotten there, they had spent enough money on me that they had to hire me! I began my job at the UNHCR on May 1, 1978.

My first major assignment was in Singapore from 1981 to 1984, which was like trial by fire, as I kept getting involved in one crisis after the other. It began with leading the organisation’s rescue effort in the ‘boat people’ crisis and resettling a backlog of Vietnamese refugees, followed by the Polish and Acehnese refugee cases. During the peak of the ‘boat people’ crisis, refugees picked up in the high seas were being brought in, and it was my job to help negotiate their disembarkation, get them into refugee camps, look after them, negotiate their acceptance by other countries for resettlement, and set them up for a new life.

Singapore was a tough posting as the country had become quite hostile to the idea of Vietnamese coming on to its shores. As prime minister Lee Kuan Yew had famously said then, “we must grow cactuses on our heart, or we will bleed to death.” He was anxious to turn people away as by 1981, there were already 4,000 refugees living in a camp, which was previously a British military base designed to house only 100 people. Each room was housing 25 people and things had turned so bad, that people were literally living on trees by propping up a few planks!

So, my task was to completely energise the resettlement process. If we could prove to the Singaporeans that we’re moving these people on, then they would allow more to disembark. Thereupon, during my weekly meetings with immigration officers from other western embassies, I would persuade them to take cases of people who were otherwise not eligible. It was a very intriguing exercise. In every other Southeast Asian country, either the government or the military ran refugee camps, while the UNHCR was merely a service provider. In Singapore, the government wanted nothing to do with these refugees. In those days, the UNHCR had a dogma that they would be non-operational. I was stuck, because I had to run the camp but didn’t have any means or authority from the UN to do so. I, thus, had to create a fictional operational partner.

It’s here that I cashed in on my Jesuit education by approaching one of the Fathers in Singapore and explained to him my predicament: I was lucky that he agreed to have a camp administrator who was not really reporting to me as he was being paid by the Catholic Fathers! Meanwhile, I also got the Vietnamese refugees to elect their own leader. There was an elected leader who would look after the affairs of the community and administer the camp.

I still remember a Vietnamese refugee family who had left their country in a small boat but were found adrift in the South China Sea. They ran out of food and drinking water, surviving merely on rainwater, hoping that somebody would rescue them. The family had two children — a baby and a two-year old toddler. Since the two couldn’t live on rainwater, the parents had slit their fingers and made the children suck their blood to get some nutrients into their system to survive! It worked, and when an American ship rescued them, I broke every rule to rush them to the hospital. To see the same family a few months later — healthy, well-fed, well-dressed and heading off for a new life in the US — was an amazingly satisfying experience that nothing could possibly match.

I was also involved in a very interesting non-Vietnamese refugee situation. It was around the time that the Polish government had banned the Solidarity (Polish trade union) after martial law was declared in December 1980. Quite a few Polish seafarers turned up at the shores of Singapore, some even swimming their way after jumping from ships anchored close to the port. When the first batch of refugees came, I had to wake the director of international protection up at around 4 am in Geneva. I asked him, “What do I do?”, to which he responded, “You just follow your mandate.” It was easier said than done, because the Singapore government wouldn’t like this. But I had interviewed the Polish folks, and since they were members of the Solidarity, the UN was obligated to help. Singapore was furious with the UN and me, but they were helpless.

The first lot come under my protection, and I put them up in a local hotel. By then, Singapore had banned the entry of the Polish. So, any Polish ship that came too close to shores had to stay onboard. But on one such ship, a Polish refugee was determined to swim to freedom. He saw an American destroyer parked at the harbour and swam towards it. The vessel rescued him, but the Singapore president ordered his release. The Americans said, “We will not release him. He is a hero for us.” The Singapore authorities were peeved and declared that the ship couldn’t sail out of the harbour until it released the man, as they were clear that they did not want a precedent to be set.

It was a logjam with the Americans stuck, the Polish ship stuck, and the Singaporeans adamant! I remember it was a long weekend and I was under the weather, when the foreign secretary, SR Nathan, rang me up. This was the same Singapore-Indian gentleman who was anxious to demonstrate that he was not particularly sympathetic to Indians and was particularly rough and harsh on me. But here was a situation where he needed my help to diffuse the crisis. “What can you do?” Nathan asked me. I replied, “I will ask the Americans to hand him [the Polish] over to me as the UN representative and then you can let the American ship go.” I spoke to the US Consul James Lassiter, who agreed on one condition. “Here’s the deal. We won’t give him to you. Initially, we’ll bring him to our consulate so that he’s on American territory. You can meet him at the Consulate.” Though slightly irregular for a UN official, I agreed to the deal. With the help of an interpreter, I realised that his case was genuine and put him at a flophouse across Bencoolen Street. Many years later, I got a wonderful postcard from him, after he eventually ended up in San Diego: “I never forget, Mr Shashi.” This satisfaction, that I had changed someone’s life, was just inexplicable.

When I look back at my tenure, it was just an extraordinary period of learning. I believe there is no art of manoeuvring or set rules that define diplomacy. In the end, it’s all about individual judgment, your ability to think on your feet and how well you can leverage your relationships.

***

Back in Geneva, I first became the deputy chief for the secretary, and then the president of staff within two years. It was a headquarters tenure that was relatively uneventful except when, towards the end, I got into a face-off with the high commissioner himself, who was an official from a Red Cross background and didn’t understand the UN culture. He didn’t understand foreigners and began to resent the popularity of his deputy, my boss. He blamed me for that, partly because we were accessible, friendly and always coming up with new ideas and initiatives.

So, he and I began to clash quite often. I was clear that we are all equally qualified professionals and we’re just representing each other’s collective interests. But the situation wasn’t proving to be conducive and I decided to leave the UN. It’s also when I had published my first Indian novel that had immediately become a bestseller in India. But when I announced my departure to Dayal, he spoke to the undersecretary for peacekeeping, who was then called political general for special affairs. “Don’t makea snap decision. Work here for a couple of months,” advised Dayal.

When I joined the division, we were just five civilians and three military personnel in the department, but by the end of 1997, we were 100,000+ strong. I remember I was working 16-18 hours a day quite often. It was a great learning experience working with Kofi Annan, the under-secretary-general for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996. We got along very well, he trusted me and often delegated to me the responsibility of signing on cables to the commander in the field.

But Kofi fell out of Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s favour. He was an Egyptian politician and diplomat who was the sixth secretary general of the UN from January 1992 to December 1996. Kofi was highly respected by foreign governments, and Boutros-Ghali realised the Americans were bypassing him in the most sensitive issues. In 1995, he transfered Kofi on a field assignment. But Kofi managed to put pressure on Boutros-Ghali to bring him back to the headquarters, within a year. It was also the final year of Boutros-Ghali’s tenure in 1996.

During a chat with Kofi, I suggested that he put his name forward for the secretary general. It was an election year in America and I had heard speeches that said if a Republican was elected as president, decision regarding American soldiers and security would be made in Washington and not by unelected Egyptian bureaucrats in New York.

Incidentally, Boutros-Ghali’s French was much better than his English. So, whenever he came on American television, he appeared like a hectoring, bullying, ranting person, but in French, he appeared suave and sophisticated. I realised how eloquence can make such a difference. You could come across exactly the way you want to if you are 100% comfortable with a language. But if you are, say 85% comfortable in a language, you can really destroy yourself if something goes wrong — vocabulary, tone, choice of words, expressions or even the stress on your face. That’s what really happened to Boutros-Ghali.

When the balloting started, the Americans vetoed Boutros-Ghali. So, he pulled out and the moment the race was thrown open, Kofi formally entered. I am proud to state that I drafted the diplomatic note that the Ghanaian government sent out to all foreign countries soliciting support. He was elected unanimously with a huge majority and became secretary general in 1996. He didn’t even ask me if I wanted to go with him to the secretary general’s office, and just assumed that I would accompany him.

***

It was a memorable time because I got to see world leaders up close and personal -- sitting in 10 Downing Street, having a cup of tea with Tony Blair, or having vodka-infused lunch with Boris Yeltsin. Meeting the Chinese president and the Japanese PM as well.

Kofi, often, had great words of wisdom, akin to an Indian yogi, that he attributed to his own father. He would always find an appropriate homily to suit a particular moment. Whenever at work, I would be targeted, Kofi would say: “Little children only throw stones at trees that bear fruit.” It was a way of saying that I was being targeted because I was productive at work. I remember something that he said but I never understood until after joining Indian politics. It is an African proverb: “When the sharks bite you, do not bleed.” I said, “I don’t understand.” Kofi asked me to think about it, and years later, when I was being vilified by the media and hounded by photographers and cameras, literally like a pack of animals, a lot of people were surprised, some disliked, and others admired, that I was staying calm and unruffled. That’s when I realised what Kofi had meant: don’t give critics the satisfaction of knowing that you are bleeding. Because if they know that you are bleeding, they would devour you completely.

In 2001, when Kofi won the Nobel prize, he came to the office and I was there to receive him at the building. He said a few words to the staff, accepted their congratulations and stepped into the elevator with me to go up to his office. On what was clearly the greatest day of his life, he turns around and asks me, “How are your children’s college applications coming along?” Now, he was the one, who had recommended them for the Yale university. But the fact that on a day like that he could think of somebody else’s children, you can’t help admire a man like that. I learnt a lot from Kofi — gentle, soft and polite to a fault who never showed any anger or yielded to pressure or pleasure.

***

It was sometime around the end of 2005, when Manmohan Singhji asked me if I would be interested in contesting for the post of the secretary general, because 2006 was to be Asia’s term. In the end, seven candidates came forward from Asia, all ranked higher than me. But since my name was not announced for candidature by then, various ambassadors came to me saying that I was better than the other candidates. In fact, any government could nominate a person, irrespective of his nationality. The-then ambassador of Papua New Guinea told me that his country would propose my candidature. I replied to him, “Sir, it’s very thoughtful of you, but I’ll only want to be a candidate if India puts me up.”

In June 2006, foreign secretary Shyam Saran called me to say that my name was going to going to be suggested. But, by then, there was some backbiting in New York. People questioned Kofi as how a member of his staff could run around for the secretary general’s post while being a serving UN official. According to policy, I had to be placed on administrative leave. So, I did that to canvass my support.

I was the forerunner after Ban Ki-moon during the ballots, but he was gaining support. The US under-secretary for political affairs called me up and said, “I am sorry, I want to let you know we are not going to vote for you.” I asked, “Why? I thought you had good relations with India.” He said South Korea had asked for support a year ago, and the vote was to maintain the bilateral relations. While that was the official stance, I had heard from a senior American, that the US did not want anymore Kofis. They didn’t want somebody who could appeal above the heads of governments and to the public. So, I knew the game was over.

I suddenly had to confront a dramatic transformation. It was a career I had enjoyed all my life, from the time I was 22, and here I was, on the 2nd of October in 2006, at 50, realising that a career that I had expected to continue till 62 was suddenly 12 years prematurely over!

Ban Ki-moon graciously asked me to stay on, but I realised that it would be viewed as a compensation for somebody who lost. I didn’t feel it was right to hang around. So, I just asked for a one-month extension and began looking out for options.

***

I didn’t initially come back to India and served as chairman of Afras Ventures for a year and a half, a subsidiary of Afras Trading, a Dubai-based company looking to expand into India. It involved frequent travelling to India initially, there was enough time to go to the gym, write more or less at leisure, have minimum number of meetings. But it wasn’t motivating enough, and money had never been a driving force in my life.

During my visits to India, I would go to Kerala to seek opportunities for Afras, and also meet up with ministers in Delhi, both from the Congress and the BJP. I would often meet Sonia Gandhi, and she would increasingly share, in confidence, about how things were going on in the government. With Jaswant Singh, I spoke mainly on foreign policy and a little bit of domestic politics. I once told him, “How can a man like you be in a party that promotes such bigotry and communal hatred?” His response was, “You know, we are all not the same.” Though he did ban Sadhvi Rithambara from his constituency and didn’t allow her to campaign; for me, there was no doubt that the party that embodied the right values for the country was the Congress.

To my pleasant surprise, Ramesh Chandra of the Congress asked me if I would contest from Kerala, though my Malayalam was not what it is today. He thought I was ‘Rajya Sabha material’. Subsequently, I mentioned this conversation to Soniaji. Congress had fared very badly in the previous elections in Kerala, besides there was no likelihood of me getting a Rajya Sabha seat. In fact, Gandhian actress Nirmala Deshpande died when two and a half years of her term were left. Manmohan Singhji needed economist C Rangarajan to take that seat, as he could have an economic advisor without making him a member of the government. All this was explained to me, in confidence, at a later stage. So, I took the decision to contest from Kerala, not from my constituency Palakkad, but from Thiruvananthapuram, for two reasons. One, there would be a lot of urban, educated people who knew about my work. Also, I thought that my kind of persona would be easier to sell to an urban electorate than in a predominantly rural region.

Needless to say, my name was not treated with enthusiasm. You know, it really takes an awful lot of hard work to deserve that kind of nomination, and I had to live through a period when my own party workers were burning my effigies, and people openly saying that they didn’t want me. But I won a record majority against the Communists. The tactic the Opposition tried against me was that I couldn’t speak Malayalam, which I was able to overcome.

It was a tough choice to give up a life in the West. The moment I came and contested the election, my marriage was on the rocks because I was not going to America every few months. I would meet my wife on a holiday when she would visit India. She didn’t want to move here, since she couldn’t relate to the country. So, we agreed to part the following year, after I became minister of external affairs (MEA). When I stepped down from the MEA post, I started devoting a lot of time to the constituency. Even when I was reappointed as minister for human resource development (HRD), I kept coming because of the domestic responsibility and shamelessly did what all Indian ministers do — bring benefits to their respective constituencies. I brought a regional office of CBSE, got some record sum of money for roads and for neglected projects such as the mental hospital. I was beginning to learn the ropes. Though I was very sad and hurt about leaving the MEA, I was gratified with the extraordinary downpouring of praise I got, both from anonymous and still-serving officers who had initially been sceptical.

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This year has been tough amid the Modi wave, when a lot of my young voters gravitated towards Modi. Thanks to some high decibel campaigning, a lot of college kids voted for Modi even in Kerala, particularly in my constituency, partly because of the nastiness surrounding the death of my wife, Sunanda. I believe some of my women supporters, too, may have stayed away. So, it was a tough election that I managed to win narrowly with 15,700 votes.

I have anchored myself a lot to live with adversities. At the UN, the career that I worked for, all my life, and where I had expected to serve for another decade, was over in a matter of hours. I had to essentially reinvent my life. You discover your inner strengths when you are really under duress. I needed it time and again, when the fake scandal precipitated my resignation from the MEA.

I am still fighting the scurrilous, voyeuristic, sensationalist lies being peddled around the demise of Sunanda. I am enjoined by my lawyers to say nothing on the merits of the matter, as it is sub-judice. The lady who wrote a book on my late wife did contact me to hear my side of the story, but I had to refuse. As a result, there is a completely one-sided account of Sunanda’s life, which is full of inaccuracies, starting with her birth date. At this point in time, I cannot do much, I can’t do it till the matter is before the court. But one day, I’ll probably get to tell my side of the story. The police have a preposterous theory of abetting suicide, so I have to fight my battle. Giving up or hollering in misery is never a solution to anything, and I feel very sorry for those who are tempted to do that, as self-pity never gets you anything in life.

You have to find your own defence mechanism. I remember, when the incident occurred, I just didn’t read the papers for a few days. Though I knew, one should know what others are saying about you, I didn’t want to in this case. Friends would tell me “you keep making these appearances at dinner parties, but the moment you leave, people whisper behind your back.” In fact, the same gentleman who sat in my house and condoled the death of my wife would go ahead and say nasty things about me at a party. That’s something I have to live with, though I feel it is easier if you take people at face value. If people are nice to you on your face, be nice to them and accept their niceness as genuine. Your own integrity is your most precious asset — whatever you do or whatever others say. And as long as you can wake up and look at yourself in the mirror, and pray to your God and say, “I know I have not done anything wrong,” that’s what gives you the strength to carry on.