Writer-diplomat Pavan K. Varma, born in November 1953, is a graduate of St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi where he studied History (Honours) and received the first position. Subsequently, he acquired a degree in Law. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1976. His career as a diplomat has seen him serve in several countries, including New York and Moscow. In New York, he was with India ’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations. He also served as Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Group of 77. In Moscow, he was the Director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cultural Centre in the Indian Embassy. His assignments in India include that of Press Secretary to the President of India, Spokesman in the Ministry of External Affairs, and Joint Secretary for Africa. He has also been High Commissioner of India to Cyprus as well as Director of the Nehru Centre in London.

In addition to his diplomatic career, Pavan K. Varma has established a name for himself as a writer of depth and insight. His first book was the highly successful and critically applauded biography of the Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib, Ghalib: The Man, The Times (Viking/Penguin 1989). This book has been translated into several Indian languages. His other books include the much-discussed Havelis of Old Delhi ( Span Tech, London, 1992 & Bookwise, India, 1999), Krishna: The Playful Divine (Viking/Penguin 1993) a book on India ’s most popular deity, and an epic poem on two of the central characters

of the Mahabharata, Yudhishtar and Draupadi (Viking/Penguin 1996).

Pavan K. Varma’s first book on a contemporary subject was the path-breaking The Great Indian Middle Class (Viking/Penguin 1998). Translated into several Indian languages, the book was an instant bestseller, and remains the focus of discussion and debate even today. As a sequel to this, he, in association with journalist Renuka Khandekar, wrote Maximize Your Life: An Action Plan for the Indian Middle Class (Viking 2000).

This book was followed by the astoundingly successful Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be India’s (Viking/Penguin 2004), described by The Economist as “one of the most subtle recent attempts to analyse the continent-sized mosaic of India and simplify it for the general reader.” It was soon published by William Heinemann, in the United Kingdom, as Being Indian: Inside the Real India in March 2005. The Japanese, Spanish and French translations of this book were very well-received, and a Portuguese version is on the way. Being Indian has also had extremely successful runs in its Hindi and Urdu editions; the book is currently being translated into Bengali.

Pavan K. Varma also has two published translations to his credit. Selected Poems: Kaifi Azmi (Viking/Penguin 2001) is the English translation of the poems of Kaifi Azmi who is perhaps India ’s most well known living poet in the Urdu language. In December 2001, he published a translation in English (21 Poems, Viking/Penguin 2001) of the Hindi poems of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then Prime Minister of India.

Pavan K. Varma is a popular Columnist, both in English and Hindi. A compilation of his columns, People Like Us, first published in the Hindustan Times, came out in book form with the same name (Har-Anand 2001). The Millennium Book on New Delhi, which he helped edit was published by the Oxford University Press in 2001.

2004 also saw the release of Love and Lust: An Anthology of Erotic Literature from Ancient and Medieval India (HarperCollins; co-edited with Sandhya Mulchandani).

Pavan K. Varma has also been the Chairperson of the Organizing Committee of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize held in New Delhi for the first time in April 2000.

Pavan K. Varma is currently the Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi.