As an Indian diplomat, I have watched the world change beyond imagination in the course of a long career. My generation and those before carried into our profession the heavy baggage of difficult experiences with the US, China and Pakistan. By the 1970s, these three accounts had mutated into a joint threat to Indian interests. The first half of my diplomatic life was dominated by two geopolitical realities: the Cold War and the rise of political Islam. They combined to precipitate the break-up of the Soviet Union, an event of great consequence for India.
