Sunanda Pushkar was found dead on January 17, 2014 in Room no. 345 of The Leela Palace Hotel, New Delhi.
Everyone is speculating the cause of her death.
Sunanda Pushkar's episode has all the ingredients of a chintzy Bollywood movie; love, glamour, death, drugs, extra-marital affair. Everyone has their own version of stories. What killed her? Was she poisoned? Was she over dosing the unprescribed drugs? Is it a conspiracy? Did her husband's alleged affair with the pak journalist make this supercilious beautiful woman kill herself?
As against the common perception that 'drug overdose' was the cause of Sunanda's sudden unfortunate demise, experts believe that intake of huge Alprazolam tablets alone cannot cause death, which were found in the room.
Few know Sunanda as a person, I thought to write this up because I think it is only fair to know her life as a child and a young girl if, anyway, you are going to sit in your sofas and speculate her choices in love, life and death.
Sunanda was born with a silver spoon in her mouth to Poshkar Nath Dass, who is now retired as Lieutenant Colonel from the army. Hailing from Bomai village of the apple-rich town of Sopore, Sunanda’s family migrated to Jammu after the onset of militancy leaving behind all the land, orchards and a grand house.
The Das family was famous in the village for their benevolence, riches and indulgence.
As a young girl Sunanda was different from the girls her age. Even though she was brought up in a village, she had disparate notions about life.
She was bold, ambitious, lively and nothing could stop her from speaking her mind. Most of the conventional Indians, ceremoniously, refer to girls like these as 'Impudent' or 'Audacious' and Sunanda was also not spared of such adjectives.
“She was always giving bold statements what we could not do as girls… She had no inhibitions. When we did our first workshop of Kashmir Vahini she sent her statement over phone,” says Dr Khema Koul, Sunanda’s childhood friend and spokesperson of Kashmira Vahini, an apex body of Kashmiri migrant Pandit women.
To the few students of her school who did not know her really well, she was this thin, Kashmiri girl, with the traditional red threads dangling from her pierced ears who was serious about her studies.
She was a person of brassbound honesty and often landed her up in troubles too.
Sunanda was a career oriented, highly motivated woman. After completing her degree in hotel management, she started her career by working as a receptionist in Centaur View Lake Hotel in Srinagar.
In Dubai she established an event management business called the 'Expressions'. She became globally renowned for sponsoring the artists and the fashion shows.
Later on she along with her husband Sujith Menon organized a Mammootty show together, which made a financial loss. After Sujith passed away in an accident, in 1997, Sunanda had to got through lot of troubles as she faced financial troubles, as she had to repay Sujith's debts, support her parents and her brother through engineering college.
When she married Shashi Tharoor they were truly, madly, deeply in love and the Indian newspapers were full of candid pictures of the couples.
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| The happy times: Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda at their wedding reception in Delhi, 2010. |
In her last few months Pushkar was seen retreating to herself and was seen alone at most of the parties, when asked about Tharoor she would say that he was busy in Thiruvanantpuram.
She was apparently depressed by the gnawing realisation that her husband, Shashi Tharoor was drifting away from her.
Friends remember Pushkar as a person who could light up any party!
She was a woman who couldn't fit into the role of a minister's wife neither did she try to.
She was politically incorrect and loved expressing herself.
A friend remembers Pushkar meeting a popular TV anchor and saying to him in a disarming sort of way, "I wonder how I haven't thrown my glass of wine at you."
She was a 'muhphat' in typical dilliwali language. Someone who was incapable of concealing her emotions.
And indeed she was. Very incapable.
Pushkar came in news highlights when she slapped a Tharoor supporter at the Thiruvanantpuram airport, alleging that he had misbehaved with her.
She was a woman whose presence one could not ignore!
The woman died at the age of 52 trying to save her love, self esteem and bruised ego.
The little Kashmiri girl whose net worth today is a whopping 80 million dollars!
It makes me really sad that amidst all this drama and mystery about her death the media highlighting that she has 3 marriages in a really derogatory way. I fail to understand that how is this relevant in the whole case.
I wonder why there is so little talk about Tharoor's third marriage?
It only disports that how the Indian media is still in the shell and how the idea of a woman marrying 3 times seems exciting to them in no other way but scandalous. No doubt Sunanda Pushkar's story has added upto the masala on which most of our newspapers thrive their sales on and TV channels their TRPs.
'Even when I go, will go smiling' Sunanda's last tweet said.
Delhi will miss Sunanda Pushkar. It will be difficult not to.
