Tharoor with Sunanda at an art exhibition. (File picture)

New Delhi, April 11: This time, not a tweet out of him.

Amid a buzz that he is about to marry again, Shashi Tharoor was away in Guwahati today, unavailable for comment.

The junior external affairs minister is said to have proposed successfully to Sunanda, a tall and elegant beautician from Kashmir who now apparently divides her time between Delhi and Dubai but is keen to move permanently to her south Delhi house. Tharoor, 54, had been married twice before.

One reason for the minister’s reticence could be that his legal separation from his second wife Christa Giles, a Canadian working with the UN, is yet to be completed. Even his close associates refused comment.

“Whatever it is, it is his (Tharoor’s) personal matter. I do not want to comment any which way,” one aide said.

“He will announce whatever, when he has something to announce,” said another.

Tharoor, however, has been known to jump the gun on serious issues — for instance, when he said India was ready to have Saudi Arabia as an “interlocutor” in Pakistan matters. Nor has he balked at taking a chance on Twitter — such as when he aimed his “holy cow” barb at the government’s austerity drive. Tharoor is perhaps being extra careful out of fear that some of those not amused by his tweets may now raise questions about his decision, though it’s an entirely personal matter.

Not that ministers getting married is unheard of. Jitin Prasada, junior minister for petroleum in the same government, tied the knot just two months ago.

Some in the party, however, apparently think that it’s one thing for a minister in his mid-30s to marry and quite another for one in his mid-50s to acquire a third wife.

A third marriage should hardly raise eyebrows, though, considering today’s reports that Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor was preparing to wed for the ninth time, at the age of 78.

Tharoor’s first marriage was to Tilottama Mukherji, an academic whom he knew from his school days in Calcutta.