Sunanda Pushkar was a fighter, her death raises a lot of questions

I met Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor a few times, in the heady days a couple of years ago just after she and Shashi Tharoor got married. I thought her friendly and charming, not to mention tall and gorgeous. So it was a shock to hear of her sad and sudden demise. She did not deserve to die like this, certainly not under a cloud, at the relatively young age of 52. I have known Shashi Tharoor for some 20 years: I met him first in San Jose at his sister’s home, and met his parents as well. But I had been an admirer of his pellucid prose from many years before that, especially The Great Indian Novel, which has some passages of singular beauty. In person, too, he is articulate, charming, and easy to like. Despite differences of political perspective, I have followed his career with interest, and have always felt he would make a splendid President of India: a brilliant writer, a sharp mind, a terrific ambassador for the nation. I met him just last week, and watched him mesmerise a group of foreign students. So I am deeply saddened at the tragedy that has befallen these two likeable, attractive people. [caption id=“attachment_1351657” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Pushkar was strong and glamorous. PTI[/caption] I can see how Shashi must be deeply appealing to women: I used to be on an American literary discussion group over 20 years ago wherein the women went ga-ga over his looks, his eyes, his prose. And since Trivandrum (or Thiruvananthapuram), my home town, is Shashi’s parliamentary constituency, I have heard how he has 50 percent of the electorate sewn up: just about every woman, young or old, voted for him in 2009. With this fatal attraction, it is not hard to believe that a Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar, was enamoured of Shashi. He may not have done anything to encourage her, yet it is entirely possible that she may have become obsessed with him. I read a report by her about a 2012 visit to India; she gushed about lots of things, but most of all about Shashi Tharoor. It may have been entirely in her own head, or maybe Shashi, flattered, led her on. In any case, Sunanda thought something was going on. She had access to Shashi’s Twitter account, and decided to publish what were allegedly messages that Tarar had sent to Shashi. These were a little surprising, as they were ill-written (odd in a trained journalist) and embarrassingly cow-eyed. I initially thought this was some sort of sick Twitter joke, but then I found there were several indirect tweets from both women that indicated deeper conflict: Tarar said something catty about Sunanda’s “baby doll haircut”, and implied she was old. Then Sunanda came right out and accused Tarar of stalking her husband, called her an ISI agent, and suggested she was trying to honey-trap Shashi (and others), who (“you know men”), would be easily tempted. Sunanda also said something to the effect that she would tell all soon, spilling the beans on the IPL scandal and various other unspecified things. She implied that her husband was being unfairly attacked in an election year, not clear by whom. And within a day, Sunanda was found mysteriously dead in her hotel room. Speculation ranged from her suffering from an incurable disease, and thus committing suicide, to her being murdered. However, the doctors who had treated her in Trivandrum a few days prior said she was indeed sick, but not with anything fatal – and later reports suggested she had lupus (unpleasant, but not fatal) and ‘stomach TB’. There were also stories that said there were marks on her body. Other reports said Sunanda had contacted media people to arrange for interviews that evening. Alas, she died a few hours before these interviews were scheduled. Sunanda’s post-mortem was done the next day, and the results are not certain; she seemed to have died of a drug overdose (possibly an anti-depressant, alprax). A Times of India report also claimed her death was not accidental - and resulted from drug poisoning, and not an unintended overdose. It could be suicide or murder. The media (I shouldn’t be surprised) also didn’t cover itself in glory in this episode. An article in Quartz (“Indian media failed Sunanda, and now she’s dead”) criticises the media for not allowing Sunanda to have a say. All in all, this is a right royal mess. From what I know of Sunanda, including what I have seen in her tweets – she was a social media addict, I hear – she was feisty. She also was vocal about her Kashmiri Pandit background, including the indignities heaped on that community; and she spoke up about how the laws in J&K discriminated against women, for instance preventing Kashmiri women who married outside the state from inheriting ancestral property (this does not apply to men). In a sad irony, she died just a day before the 24th anniversary of the exodus of Pundits, a true blot on the nation’s conscience. Given all this, it is hard to believe she committed suicide. She was a fighter, who had managed to make herself fairly wealthy by fighting her way through a “man’s world”, as she put it. That she was a beautiful woman with grit and courage surely had a part to play in it; and she wasn’t the type to go “gentle into that good night”, so far as I can tell.