Pen Drive

While Tirumurti waits for feedback from the readers,he is excited about the growing fraternity of diplomats who are turning into authors. “For the first time,Indian diplomats are taking up fiction writing seriously and are able to sustain it,” he says.

The bookshelves are an indicator. Leading the pack is Vikas Swarup,Indian Consul General in Osaka. If his bestseller Q&A was adapted into Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire,now Swarup has come out with his second book,Six Suspects. Also on a pen drive is Navtej Sarna,India’s ambassador to Israel,who’s first novel We Weren’t Lovers Like That was published in 2003. A regular at the Jaipur Literature Festival,he has also penned The Book of Nanak and The Exile.

Pavan K Varma,Indian envoy in Bhutan,also has several books to his credit,including Ghalib: The Man,The Times,Krishna: The Playful Divine,The Great Indian Middle Class,The Book of Krishna and Being Indian,all published by Penguin. He has also translated Gulzar (Selected Poems),Kaifi Azmi (Selected Poems) and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (21 Poems) into English.

Also dabbling with translation is Navdeep Suri,another IFS officer,who started the Twitter,Facebook and social media connect of the MEA. Suri has stepped into the world of writing with A Life Incomplete and The Saintly Sinner (relaunched as The Watchmaker). Both are translations of his grandfather Nanak Singh’s works.

Even though his colleagues seem to be partial to novels,Abhay Kumar,who is now posted in Kathmandu,has written several poems. He has to his credit several books,from Remains to Candling the Light,Fallen Leaves of Autumn and Enigmatic Love,apart from the non-fiction novel River Valley to Silicon Valley.

While they borrow from their experiences,the diplomats have their own writing styles. “I believe in minimal writing and maximum impact,” says Tirumurti,who is related to renowned author RK Narayan. “He is my uncle and is a hero to me,” notes Tirumurti,who has also written a travelogue on the Mansarovar Yatra.