TWEET THIS: Shashi Tharoor & Globalisation 2.0*

The minister of state for external affairs, “Row Bahadur” Shashi Tharoor, often uses the Princess Diana analogy to explain globalisation to the great unwashed:

An English princess with a Welsh title leaves a French hotel with her Egyptian companion, who has supplanted a Pakistani; she is driven in a German car with a Dutch engine by a Belgian chauffeur full of Scottish whisky; they are chased by Italian paparazzi on Japanese motorcycles into a Swiss-built tunnel and crash; a rescue is attempted by an American doctor using Brazilian medicines, and the story is now being told to you now by an Indian visiting Berlin. There’s globalisation.

On the day the effluent discharge about the Cochin franchise in the IPL reached the upper reaches of stratosphere, here’s how “Tweetiya No. 1” could describe Globalisation 2.0 using Dame Sunanda Pushkar:

“A Kashmiri beautician who migrated to Jammu marries a Delhi man, divorces him and goes to Dubai;  she runs a spa there and marries a Kerala man who dies in a road accident in Delhi, after which she moves to Toronto. Now in advertising, now in construction, now in IT, now also in travel business, now also in automobiles, she divides her time with Mumbai, and makes friends with a electrical appliances company based in Gujarat and a diamond jewellery company with offices in Antwerp.

“Introduced in society gatherings by a London-born, Calcutta-schooled, American-educated United Nations executive assistant—with twin sons in Hong Kong and London—who had a column in a Madras newspaper and trusted a godman in Puttaparti before he was elected from Trivandrum, as a “friend from Canada”,  the girl from Sopore magically lands a free 18% stake worth between Rs 70 crore and Rs 100 crore in the Cochin franchise of the Indian Premier League run by a Marwadi hailing from Uttar Pradesh who is deputy chief of the Punjab cricket association. The deal is signed in Bangalore. There’s globalization.”

* Tongue in cheek

Photograph: courtesy The Indian Express

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