New Delhi, July 13 (TIWN) One is a veteran diplomat-turned-politician - and by no means writer to boot. The other is an award-winning author and human rights activist. It's extremely rare to simultaneously be presented with two new works by Pavan K. Varma and Arundhati Roy and thus one approached the former with confidence and the latter with, well, trepidation.

To explain this, one must backtrack some four decades when I reported largely on sports for UNI. The IOA briefings were a sheer pleasure, conducted by the no-nonsense Air Vice Marshal (retd) Chaman Lal Mehta. He invariably spoke extempore, structuring the briefing in a manner one would write a news story. He would not be interrupted and nor would he take questions - so comprehensive were his briefings.  Varma's new book, "Chanakya's View - Understanding India In Transition" (Westland/pp 324/Rs 699) is precisely like that. Like in the case of AVM Mehta, one can actually imagine the wheels turning in Varma's head as he wrote these 79 articles over a period of six years. Every one of them is precise and well-reasoned - which is what made Varma the respected diplomat and commentator that he is.