Those who have read Pascal Alan Nazareth’s memoir titled A Ringside Seat to History: An Autobiography* would know how style and content can mix to create a heady cocktail. As a distinguished member of the Indian Foreign Service, Nazareth established himself as a man both of action and of ideas.
Sometime back, I wrote a piece for The Statesman, published as File Notings to Fine Literature on February 6, 2025, musing how the retirement-induced leisure saw the efflorescence of the latent talent of many members of India’s higher civil services, mostly from the IAS. The same has largely been the case with career diplomats whose offerings, however, have often been more focused in nature. In recent years, Jaimini Bhagwati’s The Promise of India: How Prime Ministers Nehru to Modi Shaped the Nation (1947-2019), Syam Saran’s How India Sees the World; Kautilya to the 21st Century, Shivshankar Menon’s Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy and Ranjit Rae’s Kathmandu Dilemma: Resetting India-Nepal Ties, come immediately to one’s mind.