Click to play videoNew Delhi: Navtej Sarna will be off to Israel, as Ambassador by next month, but the longest-serving spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs had a different hat on on Saturday evening - that of an autor at the launch of his book The Exile in the Capital.
The Exile deals with the life and death of the last Maharaja of Punjab, Duleep Singh.
At the age of 11, Duleep Singh signed away his kingdom to the British and went into exile. By the age of 16, he realised he wanted to come home, but he couldn't. He died in 1893, still in exile in Paris.
"To my mind, it is one of the most poignant stories in history. It is the tragedy of a king who lost his kingdom, everything else and his culture. He tried to get back and could not. It is not a very old story for he died only about 115 years ago. I thought it had the potential of being retold as a novel," says Sarna.
It's a tragic story, one first told to Sarna 40 years ago by his mother. And the novel is one he's been working on for almost nine years now.
This is Navtej Sarna's fourth book and he is also the latest in a line of bureaucrats taking to the pen. Fellow diplomat Vikas Swarup has come out with his second book and his first book, Q and A, is being made into a movie as well.
"People have started calling it the Indian Foreign Services school of writing. I wouldn't go to that degree. Many of us in the service are writing. There is place for us and many more in the world of books," says Sarna.
These men are not just writing files on foreign policy, but finding stories that are looking to capture the country's imagination.
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