I am grateful David Davidar and Krishan Chopra of Penguin books who persuaded me to write this book. But for them I would have never ventured to write it.

I am grateful to Revathy Venkatraman, Shangon Dasgupta, Myna Aiyanna, Rana Bose, Ajanta Chakravarty, Minakshi Pulgaonkar and Utpala Mukherjee for helping me out.

I am grateful to my office staff Gobind Ram and B.M Gupta who sat late into the night after office hours. They never cribbed . my man Friday was of course Satish Kumar Sharma. He did almost everything to make this book possible. But for him, there would be no book.

I am grateful to my friends who went through the script and suggested modifications, which I never did. Inever got the time to make any corrections, this book is almost a first draft. I completed it in thirty days flat. Couldn’t wait.

Grateful acknowledgement is also made to the editors of the Hindustan Times and the Times of India for permission to use extracts from material published in these newspapers.