Tharoor-Pushkar finally get married in Kerala

PALAKKAD - After months of media speculation, Shashi Tharoor, former minister of state for external affairs, and Sunanda Pushkar tied the knot at his ancestral home near here Sunday morning in what was said to be a typical Kerala Hindu traditional wedding.

Tharoor, a Congress MP, tied the ‘thali’ around Pushkar’s neck, exchanged garlands and handed her ‘podava’ or a new set of clothes around 8.30 a.m, friends and relatives said. Both of them were dressed in traditional attire.

They got married in the presence of Tharoor’s 94-year-old maternal grandmother. About 15 people from the Pushkar family were present at the wedding. This was Tharoor’s third marriage.

Tharoor was a former UN undersecretary general who was a candidate for the UN secretary general’s job before he lost the election to present incumbent Ban-ki Moon. He then returned to India to join politics and won a seat to parliament from Thiruvananthapuram constituency with a big margin.

He was made minister of state for external affairs, where he acquitted himself well, especially in powering India’s outreach to Africa, before he ran into media controversies over his perceived political indiscretions, particularly his tweeting where he was seen to say things he should not be saying as a minister, and then in favouring a bidder for an Indian Premier League (IPL) team from Kerala amid insinuations that he had financial stakes that he stoutly denied.

Senior Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyar was among the 300 odd guests who attended the wedding. His wife Sunanda Pushkar, for whom its her second marriage, lives in Dubai.

Many policemen were seen outside the gate of the compound.