The Favourite, the Eloquent and the Martyr, Who will Congress Side with?

BARBED WORDS

- Pushpesh Pant Former professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Congress' both barrels blazing attack on its onetime beloved blue-eyed boy Shashi Tharoor reminds one of the old story about crabs packed in a deep basket. If one fellow creature somehow manages to claw his way to the top to escape the claustrophobic prison, others forgetting their quarrels gang up to pull him down back to environs resembling the overcrowded death row in a Tihar-like prison.

Make no mistake, Dr Tharoor, the super wizard with words—and recalling another modern fable of forever young Dorian Gray—still appears much younger than his 69 years. He is a seasoned diplomat, making his colleagues in the Congress envious of his dizzying rise in the UN hierarchy before the hard heartbreaking descent.