[ilds] a cross between PG Wodehouse and Lawrence Durrell

[slighcl]

*Zulfikar Bhutto had 'ready laughter, was a past master at lying'*

*Dipanita Nath
http://www.indianexpress.com/printerFriendly/271586.html
Posted online: Monday, February 11, 2008 at 0041 hrs IST*

New Delhi, February 10

In the hallowed portals of civil services, things often get positively 
goofy. But rarely do former ambassadors write a book of comic poems 
about the lighter side of international diplomacy. And that's precisely 
what sets retired IFS officer Kiran Doshi's second work, Diplomatic 
Tales, apart.

The book reveals "the secret histories of the corps diplomatic/And who 
buried which skeletons in what attic" in 260-odd pages written in iambic 
pentameter. "The diplomatic world is, at one level, extremely serious 
but at another it is also very funny. In fact, the government of India 
is very hilarious in its own way," says Doshi, who has represented India 
in the US, Pakistan, Ireland, Libya, Malta, Kenya, Slovenia, and Vienna.

Diplomatic Tales --- Mani Shankar Aiyar will launch it on Monday --- 
comes almost a decade after Doshi's first book Birds of Passage, written 
in humorous prose. He started working on Diplomatic Tales after retiring 
from the Department of Atomic Energy in 2004, having quit the foreign 
services in 1997. The new title is structured as four types experiences, 
all peppered with a large degree of suspense --- what happens when a 
leader from a small country arrives in India in the middle of an 
Indo-Pak cricket Test match, how the love affair of a middle-aged 
bureaucrat (called Nawab of Khwab) helps avert a war between India and 
another country, the travails of a young officer posted to a "booze-free 
country" and, lastly, the story of a man with little physical courage 
being awarded the National Award for Bravery.

Doshi dodges questions on how much fact is there in "these chronicles of 
diplomats and sirens on the run/ (that) are well researched, 
authoritative --- but mostly? Great fun". There is a verse about a prime 
minister who "was used to wetting/Every forty-two minutes, on the dot/If 
not the bowl, his dhoti, or whatnot" and a tiny snippet about how a 
picture in The Indian Express results in a cricket-crazy 23-year-old 
landing a job in the civil services.

*The poems are a cross between PG Wodehouse and Lawrence Durrell's 
Esprit de Corps, the wry humour often cloaking serious issues between 
the lines. "In my experience, the tragic frequently has a comic side to 
it and vice-versa," Doshi says.*

His best posting? Islamabad, where "Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a ready 
laughter. He was also a past master at lying. Zia-ul-Haq was more grim 
and, unlike Bhutto, quite villainous."

Jawaharlal Nehru had a pronounced sense of humour, he says. Later, he 
found glimpses of the same affable nature in A B Vajpayee. Doshi, 
himself, has tasted the bizarre side of diplomacy --- acting as marriage 
counsellor to NRI couples in Libya, finding fresh coconut water for a 
visiting Indian VIP in Austria and explaining to an Irish lady that he 
couldn't, really couldn't, teach her how to wear a sari.


-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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