Gehlot, Tharoor kiss and make up

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor appear to have made up. Tharoor was in Jaipur earlier this week to promote his and Shaharyar Khan’s book on cricket. The function was attended by the chief minister and Governor SK Singh. It was preceded by a 30-minute meeting between Tharoor and Gehlot, after which Tharoor said Gehlot had forgiven him for his “cattle-class remark” and Gehlot said the prime minister had himself said it had been a joke and so there was nothing more to be said. At the function that followed, it was all hail-fellow-well-met and Tharoor told Pakistan: Send salt, send artistes, but no terrorists please. Khan recalled how in 1952, several Pakistanis came to Jaipur to watch a cricket match without bothering about passports and visas. Digressing slightly, the governor, who was the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad, said when he was serving there, his wife used to be inundated with requests from wives of senior army officers for golgappa parties. Tharoor said he thought Twitter was the modern politician’s means of communication and that he wasn't going to give it up: Not when leaders in South Africa, Europe, the US and Australia were also using it.