Diplomacy as Mythology

This is a collection of forty-nine ar¬ticles, transcripts of speeches and lec¬tures by a former diplomat divided into seven sections of seven pieces each; seven to represent the sapta-chiranjeevi or seven im¬mortal beings in the Hindu pantheon; each section carries a helpful subtitle, Hanuman as the first Indian diplomat to be sent abroad, Vibheeshana who stands for righteousness and so on. As the author announced at a book launch in New Delhi, the book is entirely the creation of the editor, Divya Iyer, who not only chose the pieces but gave them a mythological framework; and she did it as gurudakshina, an offering from a student to the teacher on the latter’s seventieth birthday.