PMO to UNSC

A calm, composed and unruffled diplomat stands up with elan in Centres of Power

- SUHAS BORKER

Centres of Power: My Years in the Prime Minister’s Office and Security Council By Chinmaya R. Gharekhan Published by Rupa

After Natwar Singh resigned as foreign minister in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal in December 2005, Sonia Gandhi was keen on replacing him with Chinmaya Gharekhan. But, for whatever reason, it did not happen. Gone was the opportunity to leverage the services of one of India’s most brilliant diplomats.

Gharekhan, a 1958-batch IFS officer, has now written his second book after his celebrated debut The Horseshoe Table: An Inside View of the UN Security Council, in 2006. Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali had found that book to be “intimate, honest and highly professional”. The same can be said for the new one, too.

Centres of Power is simply an engaging read. We are offered a ringside view of the behind-the-scenes goings-on in the prime minister’s office and the UN Security Council with the help of meticulously maintained diaries. Couched in subtle humour and a string of illustrative anecdotes—with no words like ‘I was there’ and ‘I did that’—the narrative is candid but low-key, so characteristic of Gharekhan’s “non-offensive” and “non-combative” style.

In part one, we are in the PMO from 1981 to 1986, where Gharekhan is serving two prime ministers, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. You see the author grow, with the mantra of ‘be yourself’, from a nervous first-timer