Frankly speaking: Shashi Tharoor opens up on true love, Sunanda's investigation and being a Macaulayputra

Shashi Tharoor was in his element at the Firstpost Salon in Mumbai on 13 June, away from Delhi and the crowd of television news crews. Sharing his views on a variety of issues ranging from professional to personal aspects of his life, Tharoor kept his listeners engrossed for over an hour at the venue.

Here are some of the most memorable moments from the Firstpost Salon with Shashi Tharoor:

Shashi Tharoor speaks out and at length on the Sunanda Pushkar investigation

Shashi Tharoor who made headlines first during his time at the UN and then with the Congress party in India, has been in the news over the last few months mainly in connection with the death of his wife, Sunanda Pushkar. In a first, he opens up on the psychological effects of losing his wife and how he lost his voice for three weeks after her demise. He also added that after his complete cooperation with the investigation there is “no way they can find him wanting.

Shashi Tharoor speaks of heartbreak, loss and love Shashi Tharoor candidly opened up on his personal life and his three marriages at the Firstpost Salon adding that the sadness of the failure of his past relationships did not take away the value of the joy he got from those relationships. “I think love is an amazing human emotion, I feel sorry for those who have not experienced it, and to those who have not been able to feel transported by the experience of loving and being loved,” he said.

Shashi Tharoor explains why it isn’t his fault if someone doesn’t understand “cattle class” 

Six years after he ran into trouble for his “cattle class” comment on Twitter that he says haunts him to this day, Shashi Tharoor finally spoke about how he failed to dumb himself down in order to be understood. In 2009, the then Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor said he would travel “cattle class” in solidarity with all our “holy cows.”

Talking about the incident he said, “Cattle class is not meant to demean passengers but to insult airlines for herding us in like cattle and so I said, yes I will travel cattle class. And the dung hit the roof so to speak.”

Shashi Tharoor on any BJP MPs don’t come for dinner any more

Shashi Tharoor  has felt that since the arrival of Modi the amount of socialising after work hours between politicians has reduced. No longer do BJP MP’s accept invites to dinner from Congress MPs. Tharoor believes there may have been some instruction issued to that effect but believes that it’s bad for Indian politics.

“There does seem to have been some sort of instruction going out to the ruling parties grandees that they should not be attending parties or hobnobbing with the others,” he said.

Shashi Tharoor rips apart Modi Sarkar’s foreign policy toward Pakistan

While emphasising that there is no Congress foreign policy or BJP foreign policy, Tharoor said that there have been a lot of U-turns when it comes to dealing in Pakistan. From PM Modi inviting PM Sharif for republic day celebrations to the PM studiously studying his brochure at the SAARC meet in order to ignore his Pakistani counterpart, he feels there is a certain amount of incoherence which from the view of the public should be troubling.

“Mr Modi has leveraged India’s soft power through initiatives like the International Day of Yoga though I think he blotted it by the unseemly pursuit of the Guinness Book of World Records which I thought was rather tacky, to put it mildly,” he added.

Shashi Tharoor on his wilder times at St Stephen’s. This one involved a student and his ’escort’

Tharoor detailing his time at St Stephen’s College in New Delhi, narrated a hilarious incident that involved him trying to help a fellow student spirit a woman out of the dorms after hours.

“I got into all sorts of tangles while trying to spirit this offender out through the closed gates,” he adds while narrating the incident.