Opinion First Person Second Draft

Two vigilant readers have pointed out a factual error each in my series on the Sri Lankan war published earlier this week. I regret both and have corrected them in the web edition. Respected intellectual and industrialist Vinay Bharat Ram has written that P. Chidambaram was a graduate of Harvard Business School,and not law like Lalith Athulathmudali. Mohan Tikku,former Hindustan Times correspondent in Colombo,reminds me that Hardeep Puri was first secretary (political),not deputy high commissioner. The DHC,he reminds me,was Nirupam Sen,whose fights and disagreement with Mani Dixit were well known,as a result of which he was sidelined and does not feature in this Lanka story. But he does in a later one. I will be eternally grateful to him and his wife for feeding me a luscious lasagna one lonely,but yet fully lit,late August night in Moscow as we sat watching statues of old communist leaders being yanked out by cranes,or simply hammered into pieces. But that is a story for another set of second despatches sometime soon.