Tharoor, unlike the original Gulliver of Jonathan Swift, swam into the world of Kerala Lilliputians after having had his time with the giants of Brobdingnag. His crimes had been well-known even before he contested election from Thiruvananthapuram three terms ago, throwing his party leaders into a fit of jealousy and resentment – authorship of numerous books, newspaper columns, a top job at the UN, impeccable English and French, and a cosmopolitanism quite at odds with Kerala’s mandatory provincialism. He always looked like fish out of water in Kerala; his rather belabored accent in Malayalam made matters even worse.