How Shashi Tharoor manages to stay in news

Is Shashi Tharoor a gladiator? The answer to that question would always be "yes".

Ever since the international diplomat and bestselling writer burst into our consciousness, he has always been followed by controversy.

Always excessively bright and prodigiously talented, he nearly made it as the secretary general of the United Nations which would have endeared him to Indians of all hues for life - there is nothing India likes more than an non-resident Indian (NRI) achiever, unless one is Amartya Sen and therefore seen as a red rag to the right wing or Bobby Jindal who, every time he opens his mouth, makes it extremely hard for anyone to like him even in his adopted country.

Tharoor, he of the smooth visage and smoother conversation skills, has been many things.

Serial monogamist.

Serial controversy baiter.

Serial quitter.

He has also been a member of that exclusive hair tossing MPs club comprising the other extraordinarily talented gentlemen, Jairam Ramesh and Kapil Sibal.

So here are five times Tharoor has entertained us. 

1. When he married the late Sunanda Pushkar: The feisty Kashmiri beauty was perhaps even more garrulous that her husband. An instant star on Delhi's snooty social circuit, she was even better at tossing her hair than Shashi, and known to tell him off in public, but lovingly. From ordering him to stop mid-sentence in a talk because she wanted to have breakfast or slapping a rather too familiar gent when at the airport, the "50-crore-rupee girlfriend" did not take nonsense from anyone, not even the future prime minister of India. When Shashi and Sunanda were good, they were very, very good. When they got bad, well, it just got very sad.

2. Every time he tweets: One of the most popular politicians on Twitter, his tweets invariably get him into trouble. Cattle class, anyone?

But there is more than controversy on his Twitter timeline which explains why he has 3.25 million followers. He tweets his constituency visits, links to useful services such as organ transplant registers and even stand up comic riffs. Follow him and see what we mean.

3. When he praised Narendra Modi: Immediately after the general election of 2014, Tharoor wrote a piece (not in DailyO), praising Modi for having remodelled himself from a “hate figure” to an “avatar of modernity and progress”. He also said it would be “churlish” of the Congress to ignore his “inclusive and accommodative” outreach. “Just as he remade himself from a hate figure into an avatar of modernity and progress, he is seeking to remake the BJP from a vehicle of Hindu chauvinism to a natural party of governance. That's not all. His silent bromance with Modi has seen him accept the prime minister's invitation to be a Clean India champion, with Modi even praising him in a speech to MPs while launching a workshop under a new think-tank, Speaker’s Research Initiative.

4. When he attacked the British at Oxford. In that accent: Such an accent that it comes as a shock to everyone that he didn't actually study there. Tharoor is a product of St Stephen's College and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The accent was probably something he picked up while acting with Mira Nair (then in Miranda House) on stage in college (he was Antony to her Cleopatra). Tharoor and Nair were also part of the smart Indian set in New York.

5. When he leaked his letter to Sonia Gandhi complaining about a leak: Only Tharoor can do that, go to a court of public opinion when all else fails. Elected for the second time from Thiruvananthapuram in the face of stiff opposition from the Opposition and his own party, he wrote to Sonia Gandhi about being insulted with stories being leaked about how she admonished him. The letter, of course, was leaked.

Only Tharoor can do this to himself.

Public service. Public theatre. Public praise. Public admonition. Tharoor's is a life always lived in the limelight.