Urdu poetry, diplomatic missives, the nuclear question, and forcing a Prime Minister to take a toilet break – the last High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria shared his journey and gave his insights on India-Pakistan relations in a conversation with Varghese K. George at The Hindu Lit Fest 2024.
Quoting snippets from his new book, Anger Management, in a session titled “India’s Last High Commissioner to Pakistan: The Inside Story”, he regaled the audience with anecdotes from his stint in Pakistan – he was posted there in 2017 and expelled in 2019 after the abrogation of Article 370 - and as private secretary to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1999-2004).
From the note he handed over to Vajpayee at the Agra summit in 2001 when he was talking one-on-one with General Pervez Musharraf, after which everything went downhill, to engineering a fake toilet break for Vajpayee at the SAARC summit in Nepal later that year, Mr. Bisaria spoke about the interventions used to send the right message to Pakistan, with Urdu ‘shayari’ (poetry) et al.
