Mumbai, Jan. 24 -- Those chuckling over photos of MP, Congress leader and author Shashi Tharoor going mano-a-mano with a life-sized cutout of Shah Rukh Khan recently ('Who is the fairer of the two?'), might not realise that the hyper articulate MP from Thiruvananthapuram, has had even closer shaves with Bollywood. The earliest was in 1992, when, following the success of his fiction debut (The Great Indian Novel), the then UN official had written a paean to Bollywood, titled Show Business (Declaration of interest: we are thanked in its foreword). The story of Ashok Banjara, a Bollywood superstar, the protagonist bore more than a passing resemblance to Amitabh Bachchan (of which, being critically injured while shooting, joining politics and the initials AB were only a few). The novel revealed Tharoor's fascination for the film industry, with its narrative structure mirroring the structure of the Indian formulae film of that era. The author's familiarity with 'flashbacks', 'takes' and other filmy tropes revealed how he, like others of his generation, had grown up at a time when Bollywood had held a romantic thrall over the imagination of most Indians - even the so-called westernised ones. Perhaps, Tharoor's (he'd once famously turned down a role to play a foreign minister in a Salman Khan movie saying he wanted to be the real foreign minister someday) faux horror and affected weariness in his tweet to the star ('No place for rest!') had more to do with the social media-savvy MP's understanding of how things work today. "Dear @iamsrk, when on a brief visit to Munnar yesterday, I took rest in the room you occupied in 2013, which has been converted into a shrine for you," he'd tweeted to the star, adding the hashtag #ChennaiExpress. With his 37.2 million followers, all it would require would be a single-worded tweet in response from SRK to add another few million to Tharoor's 6.7 million followers. Meanwhile, it is not known if the politico's stay resulted in any proficiency in the lungi dance....