Tharoor Lobbies For World Class Slum in Trivandrum

Trivandrum: MoS for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor was in the city today to deliver a talk on urban infrastructure planning. After gathering an audience at Symphony Hall, Tharoor wished them a very good morning, cut his talk short and declared that he would Tweet the rest of his speech from the privacy of his hotel room which also has a gym; neither of which the auditorium has.

Before the stunned crowd had a chance to react, Tharoor attempted to sneak away by shutting his eyes tight, pressing his back to the wall and moving sideways on tip toe; all this while his Wi-Fi enabled laptop was balanced on top of his head. After two minutes he opened his peepers and realized that he was moving in circles around the podium. When he saw a hundred angry eyes trained on him, Tharoor gave them the stiff upper lip, cryptically remarked 'This is why I need privacy and a gym; neither of which the auditorium has' and beat a hasty retreat. Sources who were close to Tharoor at the time reveal that he raced to the exit and sped away in a brand new 4-wheel austerity drive.

True to his word, Tharoor was on Twitter within the minute. How he managed to do so while driving is still a mystery that is yet to be solved (just like most mysteries). Top scientists suggest that perhaps the man shares a symbiotic relationship with the social networking site, both feeding off each other and growing in stature at the same time. But this is beside the point. The fact remains that in the space of a couple of hours, Tharoor managed to upload a 15000 word speech onto Twitter. At 140 characters per tweet, this is an incredible feat that would've taken the average human no less than..forget it! the average human could never have pulled this off. Not even if he had bequethed his speech and his twitter login ID and password to his children and asked them to complete if for him.

Yet, our Tharoor made short work of character restrictions on Twitter and revealed his plans on how he would make his constituency Trivandrum a global city; just as he had promised pre election. According to Tharoor, who has spent hours studying great Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, the only thing that they have that Trivandrum doesnt is world class slums. Though Trivandrum has a small one at Chengalchoola, Tharoor calls it a pathetic excuse for a slum. Occupying an area of less than 1 sq. km., Tharoor tweets in disgust that the slum doesnt even have a decent beggar to speak of. 'They all have jobs. Thooo!', tweets Tharoor.

To address this slum problem, Tharoor has called in international expert on slums, Danny Boyle. Danny Boy, who is also an expert on dogs and millionaires, asserts that if Trivandrum were to have a world class slum, he could make a movie (oscar winning), call it Slumdog Mallu Nair and thus put Trivandrum on the world map.

When asked on Twitter how he plans to bring this scheme to pass, Tharoor claims that he has alredy identified land for the project. In fact, he has put in a proposal to the Union and State Governments to acquire property in a circle around the city. His dream is that but for the sea on one side, Trivandrum should be fenced on all sides by slums. In the future, he hopes that Kochi will also be surrounded by such a slum, with the two circles of slums meeting somewhere near Kayamkulam. He also tweets that he has tears in his eyes when dreaming of such a future for Trivandrum. When asked whether he would spend a night with one of these slum dwellers, as many congress leaders on an austerity drive are prone to do, Tharoor tweets that he would certainly do so; provided the slum has privacy and a gym; neither of which the auditorium has.