I’m gainfully unemployed: Natwar Singh

NEW DELHI: The anger and frustration were gone. The ranting and raving at party leaders was over. On Wednesday evening, Kunwar Natwar Singh was calmer and strangely dignified at a time when his political life is in a shambles.

Singh drove to the India Habitat Centre for a book release after formally handing in his resignation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. On the way from 7 Race Course Road, he stopped at home to change his clothes.

He had been invited to release Chinmaya R Gharekhan’s book The Horseshoe Table, which gives an insider’s view of the working of the UN Security Council. Gharekhan was India’s permanent representative at the United Nations for a long time in the 1980s and early 1990s before becoming special representative of the UN secretary general.

The invitation was probably sent when Singh was still India’s external affairs minister. But he used the opportunity to lash out at Paul Volcker, whose report named him in connection with the oil-for-food kickbacks and eventually led to his exit. His latent anti-Americanism also came to the fore, as did his dislike for the Prime Minister. “Half an hour ago, I became gainfully unemployed,” he remarked.

On his future plans, he said, “I will be writing a book and having a jolly good time.” He is also planning a holiday but did not say where.

Singh arrived at the event an hour late, walking into a hall full of people waiting to see how he would face up to his new reality. He breezed in wearing a light-coloured bandhgala, smiling at known faces as he walked up the aisle to the dais, and stopping to shake hands with Gharekhan’s wife Rita, sitting in the front row.

His manner put all at ease. But when he began his address, he took a dig at the PM: “Chinmaya said it was very good of me to have stuck to my schedule. There was doubt whether I would come or not. But if the choice was between coming here and meeting the Prime Minister, you know I would be here.”

Reacting to the previous speaker, he said, “You mentioned Volcker, not one of my favourite people.”