New Delhi, March 6 (IANS) Even amid themselves, they note how they seem to only make gulab jamuns and samosas by the hundreds for official occasions, but India’s ‘informal diplomats’ frequently show their metier. Like this absent diplomat’s pregnant wife, under house arrest in Dhaka with her young son amid the 1965 war, ensuring she burnt the cypher books and then browbeat her Pakistani captors into treating her properly.
Despite the term ‘diplomatic baggage’, used self-deprecatingly by a Western diplomat for spouses, the wives – and occasionally, husbands – of Indian diplomats have long been the front edge of diplomatic and soft power projection in the nations they find themselves in. For it is these spouses who deal with the common people – while shopping or cooking or cleaning – of the country they find themselves in, rather than the rarified heights of chanceries, ministries, and think tanks where the conventional diplomats usually operate.
And these spouses do have some compelling stories to tell – of finding another facet of President John F. Kennedy in his keen interest in Indian cinema (spoiler alert! not Hindustani variant), the preliminary meeting between old university alumni that paved the way for the creation of Bangladesh five years later, arranging a mass-scale defection of diplomats, and maintaining composure on witnessing a fashion farce in Switzerland, as Jayshree Misra Tripathi brings out in “The Other Side of Diplomacy” (Westland Non-Fiction, 184 pp, Rs 599).
A diplomat’s wife who has spent stints on four continents, she notes that “for far too long, the ‘voices’ of diplomatic spouses have remained unsung” despite all the dislocations in the personal and professional lives and the vicissitudes they underwent in a spate of unfamiliar and uncomfortable places but gamely went on to uphold the nation’s prestige in “this unsung, unofficial role”.
However, this is not her only aim in curating this book, which was “long years in the making”. Drawing on some valuable first-hand recollections and experiences of 15 diplomatic spouses, including two husbands, or daughters (in some cases) – all accomplished in their own right, it also ensures that these memories, of America and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, of a developing China, of encounters with the likes of Nelson Mandela, King Juan Carlos of Spain, and Robert Mugabe, do not “fade into oblivion”.
As diplomat-turned-politician and author Shashi Tharoor observes in his foreword, the reader, on perusing the cover or the synopsis, may think that the book “confines itself merely to describing the lived experiences of diplomatic families” but those going on ahead with this “compendium of fascinating perspectives” will find that it “transcends such a simple summary”.
Spanning the laidback life of Brazil to the tense streets of Baghdad, from the cultured milieu of Vienna to the suburbs of Washington, scenic vignettes not only from Switzerland, but from North Korea, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe too, and an unforgettable visit to a civil war-struck Tajikistan across the second half of the 20th century and into our era, the volume goes on to show how diplomacy – both for its practitioners and their kin – is a far cry from the superficial glamour that seems attached to it. Hard work, dedication, and an encompassing empathy are the key traits needed to shine – as well as readiness to adapt to sudden developments.
Catering to carloads of Ethiopian elite who reached the Indian Ambassador’s residence well after the end of a National Day reception or having to cook an Indian meal – despite lack of commensurate experience – for Pandit Ravi Shankar and his ensemble in Beijing after he expressed his disinclination to sample any more Chinese cuisine are some of the highlights found here.
But it is the editor who has the last word with her superlative conclusion, which largely eschews recollections, to paint a realistic and unvarnished picture of the manifold issues diplomatic spouses confront in their continent-spanning lives – and the impact it has on them.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
–IANS
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