Sunanda Pushkar : IPL and Saree

I personally know Sashi Tharoor. I have followed his writing and I have admired his sense of humor and I respect him for being a straight shooter and behaving with highest standard of integrity.

So all this controversy about his involvement in IPL-Kochi and his relationship with Sunanda Pushkar seems kind of odd to me.

If you don’t know, this is the controversy. There is a cricket league in India called IPL. It has several teams in it and each team is worth about $500M to $1B – yes the number is correct, and it is in dollars and nor rupees.

Recently the IPL added a couple of new teams and one of them was a team for Kochi (a second tier town in south India)- the area that Sashi Tharoor represents.

Sashi Tharoor helped in whatever way he could to ensure that Kochi gets a team. It is an economic boom to the region to have a team.

Now the opposition is claiming that he should be fired or should resign, because even though he personally did not take any money to helping Kochi, his close friend Sunanda Pushkar got some equity in the company. Sunanda Pushkar is an accomplished business woman and she did help Kochi put the deal together and yes she is a close friend of Sashi Tharoor. The claim is that she was a “proxy” for Sashi Tharoor.

Sunanda Pushkar hates that claim – she says that she has done a lot to help the team and she is nobody’s proxy. And her closeness to Sashi Tharoor is a private matter.

There are rumors about Sashi and Sundana getting married.

It is being speculated that Shashi Tharoor might be tying the knot, a third time, with Sunanda Pushkar, the owner of a spa. The two have often been spotted together in a manner which suggests more than just social or professional alliances. The two were once seen in a marriage party, with the minister draping an arm about the beautician. In fact, Sunanda Pushkar has often been heard to introduce Shashi Tharoor to certain acquaintances as her fiance. However, the matter has not been commented upon by either camp. In fact, Shashi Tharoor has declined to say anything about the issue at all.

So I see how the contoversy can arise.

But I fully support her because I see this as a saree discrimination – just because somebody wears a saree, that person becomes subservient or something. We got to get over that prejudice.

And of course the second reason I support her is because she has good taste in (men and) sarees.