Tharoor, please fall on feet of Koda saheb right now

I am very happy today. I was laughed all the way out of a room when I had once suggested that Shashi Tharoor is no better than my favourite politician Madhu Koda. The English-thinking and speaking crowd around me had all agreed universally that I had one drink too many and had lost my senses at the start of the evening itself.

Come on, one of these English thinkers told me, how could I ever compare Tharoor with Koda. Tharoor looks like a film star- something like Mukul Sharma in the Bengali classic Paroma that got all the girls in Jadhavpur University drooling- speaks like one- he could shame Prannoy Roy with the command and ease with which he faces the studio cameras- and lastly looks rich. Or as the Maharashtrian will look at some people and say’ srimant dikhta hai’. The kind of chap who never gets stopped by the ticket-checker at any railway station. If you have any doubt about it, please stand below the indicators at the south-end of Churchgate station and you will see how hordes of KC, Jai Hind and Sydenham collegians- hair gelled, clothes coolly casual and skin Parsi fair- get ignored by the TC who is busy looking for guys who look like me.

Coming back to Koda. Just think of Koda and doff your hat. In dirt poor Jharkhand, the man becomes a chief minister despite being an independent - can you beat that- ends up buying mines in Liberia- did you know where it was- and still manages to get his wife and whole set of cronies elected in the elections that followed his unraveling as one of the most corrupt people this country has ever seen. And everyone from Lalu Prasad Yadav to the Congress- who propped him- and the BJP- which loathes him- know Koda is a phenomenon that will just never cease to amaze. Even the all-conquering naxals of the Jharkhand belt were on his payroll.

Now just take a look at Tharoor. He plays mentor to the Kochi IPL bid. His PR machinery gets the story to the front pages of every paper. Tharror might have thought that Malayalis who consider themselves to be slightly more brainy than the rest of the country- idiots- would have been impressed with the way the non-Malu looking Tharoor was doing so much for the state. But one slight problem. Now when it comes to money and a minister sitting a ‘mentor’s distance’ away from the pile of money – Rs 1500 blooming crores-, did Tharoor or his PR machinery even for a second think that the people wouldn’t have guessed why the neta was in it for?

Then comes the whole news about the Kochi IPL chaps offering a friendly gift of Rs 70 good heavens crores to a woman who is apparently a beautician but according to her Linkedin status is sales manager with Dubai investments and real estate company Tecom (thought Tecom says Pushkar left employment in March 2010). By the way please check out the photograph this lady has pasted on her Linkedin account. Hmmm. I rest my case.

Then comes the news that the lady in question and Tharoor are great friends. Now we know what that word means after all. Haven’t we read film gossip magazines? Rs 70 crores for a friend? Come on, Tharoor that was clumsy. Please leave your ego aside, go to my favourite superstar Madhu Koda and learn some tricks of the trade.

All the fragrances and riffraff of the United Nations have made you a clumsy idiot. Let Koda sir teach you never to think you are more intelligent than the system that tracks you, binds you.

Let Koda sir teach you, - actually all of us Indians- never ever to judge a book by its cover.