Gopalkrishna Gandhi was born in 1945 and did a BA (Hons) and MA in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi University. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1968 and served in Tamil Nadu. He was secretary to the Governor of Tamil Nadu and to the vice-president of India. After taking voluntary retirement in 1992, Gandhi saw diplomatic service in London and was head of India’s diplomatic missions in South Africa, Lesotho, Sri Lanka, Norway and Iceland. He was Secretary to President K.R. Narayanan from 1997 to 2000 and was Governor of West Bengal from December 2004 to December 2009. Gandhi has written a novel Refuge on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka that first appeared in 1987 and a play in verse, Dara Shukoh. He has compiled The Essential Gandhi and contributed to newspaper columns. For over two decades now, he has been that familiar oxymoron—‘a regular writer of occasional pieces’.