Shashi Tharoor & The Tale of His Ex and Estranged Spouses
Tilottama Tharoor:
Half-Bengali, half-Kashmiri, Tilottama (nee Mukherji) is a couple of years older than Tharoor. She studied at Loreto House and Loreto College, Kolkata, and was known for her debating prowess and 'Bengali ethnic' looks.
Tharoor and she were both very popular with members of the opposite sex, and when they started seeing each other, their admirers in Kolkata would say, "Shashi is smart, but she is no less." The two married young and had twins, Kanishk and Ishaan - the first is an associate with the e-magazine, Open Democracy, and the second is a Hong Kong-based journalist with Timemagazine. Tilottama followed her husband as he progressed in his career in the UN ("she let him flower," say folks in Kolkata to this day).
But the two split after they "grew apart", as Tharoor put it in an interview recently. Tilottama is a humanities professor at New York University, and is a prominent face on the intellectual circuit of both Kolkata and New York, who is seen at book launches and film festivals. A gay and lesbian rights activist, she was one of the signatories to the statement initiated by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and writer Vikram Seth against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
Christa Giles:
The Deputy secretary of the United Nations Disarmament Commission, Giles married Tharoor in 2007, after what was believed to be a long affair, which led to many a whisper down the corridors of the UN headquarters in New York.
During the last one year, the minister has hinted at the tremendous personal sacrifice he's had to make by joining politics. He has talked about the "pain" of separation from his wife. Sources reveal that matters between the two had come to a head recently, and they made a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage some weeks back with a holiday in Udaipur.
Those close to Tharoor fear that media reports of his "friendship" with Sunanda Pushkar will worsen his strained ties with Giles.
Half-Bengali, half-Kashmiri, Tilottama (nee Mukherji) is a couple of years older than Tharoor. She studied at Loreto House and Loreto College, Kolkata, and was known for her debating prowess and 'Bengali ethnic' looks.
Tharoor and she were both very popular with members of the opposite sex, and when they started seeing each other, their admirers in Kolkata would say, "Shashi is smart, but she is no less." The two married young and had twins, Kanishk and Ishaan - the first is an associate with the e-magazine, Open Democracy, and the second is a Hong Kong-based journalist with Timemagazine. Tilottama followed her husband as he progressed in his career in the UN ("she let him flower," say folks in Kolkata to this day).
But the two split after they "grew apart", as Tharoor put it in an interview recently. Tilottama is a humanities professor at New York University, and is a prominent face on the intellectual circuit of both Kolkata and New York, who is seen at book launches and film festivals. A gay and lesbian rights activist, she was one of the signatories to the statement initiated by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and writer Vikram Seth against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
Christa Giles:
The Deputy secretary of the United Nations Disarmament Commission, Giles married Tharoor in 2007, after what was believed to be a long affair, which led to many a whisper down the corridors of the UN headquarters in New York.
During the last one year, the minister has hinted at the tremendous personal sacrifice he's had to make by joining politics. He has talked about the "pain" of separation from his wife. Sources reveal that matters between the two had come to a head recently, and they made a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage some weeks back with a holiday in Udaipur.
Those close to Tharoor fear that media reports of his "friendship" with Sunanda Pushkar will worsen his strained ties with Giles.
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