Thiruvananthapuram, May 18 — Shashi Tharoor was only 10 when his short story, ‘Henry’s Last Battle,’ was pub-lished in Bharat Jyothi, the Sunday edition of the ‘Free Press Journal’ in Mumbai. “It was set against the backdrop of the American civil war,” says the Congress politician and former UN under-secretary-general. “A Yankee father and his Confederate son battle against each other. In the end, the father kills the son.”
When the story was published it was a turning point for Tharoor. “There is nothing more addictive than seeing your name in print,” he says. “You keep wanting to see it again and again. It is like the first kiss.” Tharoor continued to publish his fiction in several English language publications – ‘The Illustrated Weekly of India,’ ‘Eve’s Weekly,’ ‘Chan-damama,’ ‘Youth Times’ and ‘Junior Statesman.’ However, his parents told him that it was impossible to earn a living in India by writing. “They said I had to study hard and have a conventional career,” says Tharoor, whose parents moved from Mumbai to Kolkata when he was 13.
When Tharoor grew into his late teens, he realised that writing could provide the opportunities to have a regular career. Virendra Dayal, a senior official in the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva happened to be on holiday in Kolkata in 1975. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had just declared the Emergency. For the Independ-ence Day issue of ‘The Statesman,’ Tharoor had written an article called ‘A sense of belonging.’ “It was a thinly veiled criticism of the feeling of alienation that the Emergency had brought on.” Dayal read the article and was impressed. “He commented on it to his relatives around the breakfast table,” says Tharoor. “One of them said, ‘Would you like to meet the author? Shashi and I are acting together in a play.” It was ‘The Mousetrap’ by Agatha Christie.
Tharoor met Dayal and had a wonderful conversation. “He said I should look him up if I came to New York. From the way he said it I knew he was sincere.” In 1978, when Tharoor went to study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplo-macy at Tufts University, USA, on a scholarship he met Dayal in New York. The senior diplomat encouraged Tharoor to apply to the UNHCR. “I did so and I have no doubt that it was Viru’s recommendation that earned me an interview. But he was very ethical and scrupulous and refused to participate in the selection process.” Nevertheless, Tharoor gained entry into the UNHCR.
“When I joined it was a small organisation. But soon the Vietnamese boat people crisis erupted, the Soviets marched into Afghanistan, there was a coup in Nicaragua and a deadly famine in Ethiopia.” Tharoor, who was assigned to head the Singapore office at the age of 25, had to handle the Vietnamese boat people and set up a refugee camp.
“The refugees were leaving in tiny boats from Vietnam and were being rescued by big ships and brought into the port in Singapore.” Tharoor hasn’t forgotten the sight of a family with two babies who arrived barely able to stand on their feet. “They had run out of food and water. To enable their children to survive the parents had made several small nicks on their fingers so that the babies could suck the blood.” A few months later Tharoor was able to relocate them to the US and enable them to begin new lives. “It was an amazing experience. I knew I had made a difference to many lives. It matured me as a person.”
After 11 years Tharoor was planning to leave when he got a job in peacekeeping in the UN. “When I joined the UN, I intended to work for a couple of years and return to India.” Instead, he worked for 29 years, reaching the post of Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information. Along the way, writing at night and on weekends, he has published 11 well-received books of fiction and non-fiction.
In 2006, Tharoor decided to contest for the post of Secretary-General. “It was Asia’s turn. I felt that if I did not seek this opportunity another one might not come my way.” Initially, he did receive a lot of support from many Asian countries. However, in the end, he lost to South Korea’s Ban Kimoon. Tharoor quit the UN on March 31, 2007. He felt that having contested and lost, he was unworthy to be there. “It meant I had to rethink my life,” he says. He started spending more time in India and became the chairman of Afras Ventures, a Dubai-based business enterprise. When an opportunity to join electoral politics came calling, Tharoor accepted it. “This has led to a complete re-booting of the operating system,” he says with a wry grin. And now he has a new avatar- repre-sentative of the people of Thiruvanthapuram in Parliament. Had he lost, he always knew that another fork in the road of life awaited him.