Historian Narayani Basu did not set out to be a historian. But she did set out to be a biographer.
And it was at her dining table that the path presented itself: one evening during university days, she was telling her mother about VP Menon and what she’d studied that day, only to be casually informed that he also happened to be her great-grandfather.
It sounds unlikely, but she swears it’s true. Her family lineage was never really a topic of discussion at home. The shock of this sudden discovery was soon replaced by the surprise of just how little publicly available information there was on him. And so Basu found herself at the National Archives of India.
Historians like Basu show that there need be no distinction between serious scholarship and fine writing, says historian William Dalrymple. And her choice of form, the biography, is making up for a serious shortfall in the Indian market. But her account of Menon, who played an important role in the political integration of independent India, is not a hagiography by any means: it presents him as a person, warts and all, offering precious insight into the thought processes that shaped modern India.