But Sunanda is not the only woman in the life of former Minister of State for External Affairs (no pun intended about External Affairs). Tharoor was married twice before. His first marriage was to Tilottama Mukherji, an academician based in Kolkata, whom he knew from his schooldays there. His second marriage was to Christa Giles, a Canadian civil servant. He is now involved in a messy legal divorce battle with her. Will he be third time lucky, if he were to marry again is anybody's guess.

Even in his college days - Tharoor did graduation from the prestigious St Stephen's College in Delhi - it were his looks and his debating skills that made him popular with girls, while the boys were obviously envious of him. In fact, two booklets were brought out by them on Tharoor - A day in the life of Shashi Tharoor and Emperor in new clothes. A quote that did the rounds of the college canteen was: “Shashi Tharoor wakes up quite early, fixes his smile and gets ready for the day”. Extremely conscious about his personality, Tharoor would always make sure that he was suitably well dressed for every occasion, be it at his meeting with foreign dignitaries, addressing political meetings, attending book launches or evening get-togethers.

Fond of good things in life, one of his politician friends recalls how he refused to drink anything since single malt whiskey was not available at a party at a minister's residence. The minister immediately rushed his son to a friend?s house in South Delhi to fetch a bottle of single malt whiskey for Tharoor. You may disagree with him, blame him for frequently embarrassing the government of which he himself was a member and for his controversial tweets, but you can’t ignore Tharoor.

A prolific author, columnist, journalist and human rights activist, it was Tharoor's stint as the United Nations Under-Secretary General that earned him kudos from all quarters, including Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. The Congress leadership saw in Tharoor a young and sophisticated Indian who could enhance India's image abroad as well as improve the country's prospects of getting a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. It was clearly with this intention that Tharoor was fielded as India's candidate for the coveted post of UN Secretary General in 2006.

The South Koreans who had fielded Ban Ki-moon as their candidate were so scared of Tharoor that they launched a villification campaign against him, bringing out a book giving vivid details of his ‘escapades’. Had he been elected, the then 50-year-old Tharoor would have become the second-youngest Secretary-General, the first being Dag Hammarskjold who was appointed at the age of 46. But that was not to be. Amid speculation over his post-UN future, Tharoor-in addition to a variety of other activities in his private life-became chairman of the Dubai-based Afras Ventures, which established the Afras Academy for Business Communication (AABC) in Thiruvananthapuram. It was during his stay in Dubai that he came into close contact with Sunanda, although their association came under intense media scrutiny only after the IPL row erupted.

When the Lok Sabha elections were announced in March 2009, Tharoor decided to try his luck in the electoral arena. Thanks to his proximity to the Congress leadership, he managed to secure the ticket for the Thiruvananthapuram constituency. The Leftists labelled him as an agent of America and Israel to garner Muslim votes. The CPM tried to wean away Congress supporters by arguing that since Tharoor did not even know Malyalam, he could not safeguard their interests. He countered saying he had learnt enough Malayalam to fight for their interests in Delhi.

Despite odds heavily stacked against him and attempts at sabotage by his own party men, Tharoor surprised everyone by winning the seat with a handsome margin. Not only that, he also managed to grab a berth in the Manmohan Singh government as the Minister of State for External Affairs.

That kicked off what ultimately turned out to be a bumpy ride for this suave but controversial former diplomat who was a new entrant to the rough and tumble of Indian politics. However, even his detractors acknowledge that during the 10 months that he served as junior foreign minister, Tharoor managed to forge personal equations with many African and Arab leaders and made a visible difference to India's diplomacy in Africa.

His aides in the ministry recall that Tharoor had established such a close relationship with foreign ministers of different countries that many of them are on twitter with him. It was his success in imparting a new vigour to India's Africa policy after India neglected this resource-rich continent for several years that some Chinese blogs launched a whisper campaign against him.

There are many who believe that Tharoor's secretary Jacob Joseph was to blame for many of the woes of his boss. Tweeting by Tharoor regularly, even on important policy matters of the government, was one of the grand proposals made by Joseph to Tharoor to increase the latter’s popularity rating.

Perhaps that proved the undoing of the youthful minister. His ‘cattle class’ remark on the government's austerity drive and later on the stricter visa norms for foreigners earned him the wrath of the Congress leadership. Tharoor, however, managed to keep his job intact.

But the IPL controversy and his alleged association with the Kochi franchisee became too hot to handle for the Congress leadership which advised him to put in his papers.

Tharoor’s association with Sunanda and the resultant controversy has become a butt of jokes in political circles now. The day after Tharoor resigned, one senior politician was heard saying in the corridors of Parliament that Tharoor was in honeymoon mode and apparently wanted to give the Kochi franchisee to Sunanda as a wedding gift.

A parody of a song from the film “De Dana Dan” is coming handy to those bent upon making fun of him: “Main baarish kar doon paise ki, bas Kochi ho jaye meri”. Others are concentrating more on the literal meaning of the term “sweat equity” of Rs 70 crore that Sunanda had managed to get, thanks to some “mentoring” by Tharoor. He definitely knows his cricket, as he was a prolific player during his St. Stephen’s days. Even now, he wields the willow competently when parliamentarians clash on the cricket field.

In fact, the first prominent sighting of Sunanda alongside Tharoor was during a cricket match of the parliamentarians at the Modern School ground in Delhi. Photographers had a whale of a time clicking the beauty. Before Sunanda’s role in the IPL deal was made public by Lalit Modi, some regional newspapers had carried reports about Tharoor’s “impending” marriage with her, which he neither denied nor accepted.

Now that the cat is out of the bag that they are one item, Tharoor has still not disowned his friend, despite losing his ministerial berth and the bad name the IPL deal got him. Strange, such a thing has happened to an intelligent man, who was a role model for many expatriate and other Indians, with a successful writing career, and whose record of completing a PhD at 22 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (Massachusetts) still stands. He was a good actor and the play he did with Mira Nair is still talked about. He travels on uncharted territory, and shows flamboyance even in controversies and falls. But his image as a citizen of the world has earned him many fans, even after his fall from grace, though his “immaturity” was first pointed out by former US president George Bush when the Indian Government pushed for his candidature for the post of the UN Secretary-General. In hindsight, Bush was right as Tharoor has proved in a short span of eight months that he has to mature a lot to survive in the hurly-burly world of Indian politics.