BENGALURU:Touching tributes to distinguished ambassador, late A P Venkateswaran, adorn the book Venkat Forever that was released on Saturday.
The book was release at a function organised at The Indian Institute of World Culture (IIWC) to mark the book’s release by former Chief Justice of India Justice M N Venkatachaliah. At the event, former Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, who has edited the 217-paged book along with Venkateswaran’s son-in-law, James A Peck, called it “a valuable record of Venkateswaran’s experiences”.
This compilation of outpourings of grief and adulation that followed the death of the former Foreign Secretary on September 2, 2014 has been released by Konark Publishers Private Limited. The material for it was gathered largely from priveleged communication from the Indian Foreign Service e-mail group, and messages, letters and newspaper articles written about the former Ambassador.
The book has a first-person account of experiences and observations of Venkateswaran, provided by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Council of World Affairs. Sreenivasan quoted from tributes penned by prominent individuals, including T J S George, Editorial Advisor, The New Indian Express. In his tribute to Venkateshwaran in A Foreign Legend George wrote: “Both Dixit and Venkat were Foreign Service legends... Two very different men, different character types, different styles, but both equally distinguished in their probity and their sense of honour, both paragons of patriotism. India was richer for them...”
Usha Venkateswaran said her husband enjoyed speaking to intelligent people. On his love for languages, she said, “Together, we learnt Amharic, Russian, German and Arabic.”
Venkat Forever is priced at Rs 595 and is available at all leading bookstores, said Sreenivasan.