Kaveree Bamzai January 18, 2014
American academic Laurel Thatcher Ulrich once wrote that well behaved women rarely make history. Sunanda Pushkar was not particularly well behaved by political standards. Politicians' wives are meant to be seen. Not heard. Even when they exit, they are meant to do so quietly, as Payal Abdullah did when she divorced Omar. And another well-known young political couple is in the midst of separating and doing so in the most sophisticated way. Political wives are not meant to go out on social media, accompanied by a flurry of tweets and a blaze of newspaper interviews.
Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor with Shashi Tharoor.
But then Sunanda Pushkar was not a quiet woman, the kind the Capital has come to expect. She was loud, boisterous, given to dancing and singing in public. She was also an outsider, in from Dubai, a city of sudden makeovers and dubious transformations, whom the Capital wives were never quite comfortable with. She loved to cook for people, adored entertaining, and had a habit of exchanging intimate secrets with perfect strangers. In a city where politicians still drink whiskey in glasses encased in white napkins while their wives are left to discuss diamonds with each other, she was an anomaly. She was politically incorrect and had no qualms airing her opinion whether it was on Article 370 or on gender discrimination. She could slap a man in full public view for touching her inappropriately, just as she could sting Narendra Modi on TV for his Rs.50 crore girlfriend remark.
She was tactile in a city where a polite namaste is expected; she had two failed marriages when even one is considered a public nuisance; and she had a habit of speaking her mind when discretion is the order of the day. She was, all in all, a political time-bomb.
It's a function of how sexist politics is. Unless a woman is a politician in her own right, which is usually an accident of birth, she is expected to be a mere accessory. And not just in India. There is an unwritten rule in politics worldwide: when a man does wrong, look the other way. Whether it is Huma Abedin who stood by her sexting husband Anthony Weiner or her boss Hillary Clinton, women are supposed to grit their teeth and smile through their tears. Read Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, a thinly-veiled novel based on Laura Bush, to see what is expected of political wives--Alice Lindgren is intelligent, thoughtful, inclined to be reserved and slightly prudish, a lover of books and libraries, conventional in her devout middle-class Christian upbringing. For her good manners meant accommodating the person you were with.
Sunanda didn't believe in accommodating anyone. She believed in dancing with them till dawn, ignoring all the whispered jibes about her bottle blond hair, her flawless skin and her public displays of affection.
For a hierarchy-obsessed city like Delhi with its careful rules about who to be seen with and where, she was a breath of fresh perfumed air. It was all too much for the Capital to bear.
Just like Sunanda.
Union minister Shashi Tharoor taking away the body of his wife Sunanda Pushkar from the AIIMS.
She was tactile in a city where a polite namaste is expected; she had two failed marriages when even one is considered a public nuisance; and she had a habit of speaking her mind when discretion is the order of the day. She was, all in all, a political time-bomb.
It's a function of how sexist politics is. Unless a woman is a politician in her own right, which is usually an accident of birth, she is expected to be a mere accessory. And not just in India. There is an unwritten rule in politics worldwide: when a man does wrong, look the other way. Whether it is Huma Abedin who stood by her sexting husband Anthony Weiner or her boss Hillary Clinton, women are supposed to grit their teeth and smile through their tears. Read Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, a thinly-veiled novel based on Laura Bush, to see what is expected of political wives--Alice Lindgren is intelligent, thoughtful, inclined to be reserved and slightly prudish, a lover of books and libraries, conventional in her devout middle-class Christian upbringing. For her good manners meant accommodating the person you were with.
Shiv Menon during cremation of his mother Sunanda Pushkar at Lodhi Road crematorium in New Delhi.
Sunanda didn't believe in accommodating anyone. She believed in dancing with them till dawn, ignoring all the whispered jibes about her bottle blond hair, her flawless skin and her public displays of affection.
Union minister Shashi Tharoor carries the mortal remains of his wife Sunanda Pushkar during her cremation procession at Lodhi Road crematorium.
For a hierarchy-obsessed city like Delhi with its careful rules about who to be seen with and where, she was a breath of fresh perfumed air. It was all too much for the Capital to bear.
Just like Sunanda.
Sunanda Pushkar with husband Shashi Tharoor.
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