HYDERABAD: Whether it was flooring the audience with his witty replies or presenting compelling arguments with incomparable vocabulary, Shashi Tharoor was at his nostalgic best during an interaction at an event on Monday.
Speaking at an event organised by FLO (Ficci Ladies Organisation), the politician-author spoke on many apolitical topics.
When chairperson of FLO Hyderabad C.A. Shubhraa Maheshwari sounded Tharoor on the lack of representation to women in certain fields, he admitted it to be the case even though women had recorded better success rates.
“For various reasons India’s culture has been discriminatory towards women. In my experience, women in fact fare better than men as they are less easily distracted and more productive,” he said.
On what made him so popular among women, Tharoor quipped that the question should be asked to the women. In the same vein, he advised men, “If you respect women they will like you.”
Speaking about the considerable criticism that comes his way owing to his political work, Tharoor said he was unprepared for it when he entered politics and found it quite disturbing.
“I realised I should grow a thicker skin. My boss in the UN Kofi Annan (former Secretary General) once told me a Ghanaian proverb to help counter criticism — ‘When sharks bite, do not bleed’. When my wife passed away and all kinds of things were said, I realised that if I showed my pain I would give satisfaction to those saying such things. Then I understood the meaning of the proverb,” he said.
He was never motivated to work for money alone, but rather by trying to make a difference in people’s lives, and his political career allowed him to do that, he said.
When quizzed on why businessmen were generally afraid to criticise politicians, Tharoor attributed it to the government having an impact on businessmen’s ability to do business and having a low threshold to misuse authority.
In a lighter vein, when asked if not a diplomat, or politician or an author, what career would he have pursued, Tharoor quipped: “I am a cricket nut and would have been a very elegant batsman, an off-spinner, a tiger in the field and a brilliant tactician. As a child I wanted to play cricket very badly, and indeed when I grew up I played it very badly.”
