Shashi Tharoor was the chief guest at The Telegraph Online Edugraph 18 Under 18 Awards 2025 presented by EIILM Kolkata, powered by UEM Kolkata, and co-powered by Techno India University.

Actress Swastika Mukherjee, who steered the conversation with signature aplomb, began with a rapid-fire round. When asked about the one book that Dr Shashi Tharoor would recommend all teenagers to read, he said it would be the Mahabharat.

Asked about a word he wishes more people used, Tharoor cited 'defenestration'.

“To defenestrate means literally, to throw out of the window. ‘Fenestra’ comes from the Latin for ‘a window’. To defenestrate is to throw out of the window but you can use it metaphorically to reject something and to discard something or someone. You can say I was defenestrated by my party or somebody was defenestrated from the cricket team.” Tharoor said as the packed auditorium of the South City International School listened with rapt attention.

Swastika also asked Tharoor how he became a published author when he was just 10 years old and how he inculcated his love for reading.

“I suffered from asthma,” Tharoor revealed. “Those days there were no inhalers, there were no ventilators, no nebulizers and all of these things. They just give you these very strong tablets that made your heart go ‘thud thud thud’ so you could sleep. At least forced your lungs open so they could breathe and I would be literally sitting up, unable to go out and play with my friends or play cricket and what could I do. I would read. I read books of my parents I couldn't fully understand but that helped me with my vocabulary and so on and when I ran out of that I would take the fattest books they had and play book cricket with them. When I ran out of that, what could I do? If I couldn't read, I would write.”.

Commenting on how he was as a kid and if he bunked school, the MP from Thiruvananthapuram replied, I was a good student and the teacher’s pet and I never bunked class. We did go to Flury’s and Firpo’s, not during classes, and there was a debate as to where the better cake was."

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Video Producer: Mayank Chawla

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