Mani Shankar Aiyar was educated at Welham, Doon, St Stephen’s, and Cambridge before joining the Indian Foreign Service after a brief entanglement with the Intelligence Bureau. He served for twenty-six years in posts abroad, ranging from Brussels to Hanoi to Baghdad and Karachi, with ambassadors who alternated from being outstanding mentors to nasty sticks-in-the-mud, besides two postings at Headquarters in as many as three different ministries. In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi inducted him into the PMO from where he migrated four years later into politics and Parliament. His special interests include Panchayati Raj and Pakistan. Memoirs of A Maverick: The First Fifty Years (1941–1991) is his latest publication.