This Lady'S No Pushover

The lady still doesn't drink but one can sympathise with the old codger who thought she must. For Ghose has been known to sit across from dapper ambassadors, in a salwar kameez, with one leg crossed diagonally across the other knee, quite at ease. Self-possessed and cool, she doesn't hesitate to use her special brand of acerbic directness to devastating effect. The days of subtle digs, token gestures and hushed understatement in the elegant chambers of diplomacy are passe. In this age of Riaz Khokhars and Robin Raphels, Ghose fits right in.

This contemporary single woman can come across as a sort of cross between the Empress Victoria and Atilla the Hun as she trots smartly into her office, plonks her huge bag down, fishes out a pack of cigarettes and lights up before firing instructions to her underlings, shooting replies to questions on India's positions on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and looking through the mail.

 

Ghose may actually have wished she did drink over the past year that she's spent as India's permanent representative to the UN at Geneva. She's had to stand diplomats and journalists endless rounds of drinks. Those sessions with some of the western members of the UN press corps have been useful: they're far more appreciative of India's positions and sympathetic to the gritty little sari-clad lady than they were some months ago.

With at least some of the women journalists at the UN press centre, in fact, Ghose is obviously something of an icon. They hang onto every word she utters and address her reverentially even when she calls out a cheery hi across the corridors. One of them even whispered an apology for the rudeness of her countries' ambassador at one of the gruelling sessions of negotiation that have dominated the last few months of Ghose's life.

She's had to negotiate the pitfalls of hammering out a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that wouldn't end up as a nuclear non-proliferation treaty by another name and holding out when it did. She knew nothing about disarmament politics or nuclear physics when she first arrived in Geneva last year, fresh from a stint as ambassador in Cairo. So,

at first, she was as silent as a mouse. I spent the first three months reading everything on the subject I could lay my hands on before I said anything at the conference.

She stopped reading much else, which wasn't easy, since she's normally up on the latest in fiction, politics or

science fiction. Nor did she have much time for the walks she enjoys taking in the mountains or for the gardening she loves. (Her other passion is Hindustani classical music.)

If it was a taxing time for her, it wasn't easy on her staff either. She's very

irritable when she's not sure of herself, says one of them. Once she's on top of

a situation, she's as cool as a cat. Tigress, rather, in the jungles of international diplomacy.

She doesn't hesitate to take swipes at the embassy staff any more than at anyone else. At lunch at an Indonesian restaurant in Geneva, two of the embassy staff recoil in mock horror, muttering yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am as she rounds on them with: I thought we just decided on noodles. They'd had the temerity to request that a bowl of plain rice be added to the order. Having taken her swipe, the little tigress orders the rice anyway.

Other ambassadors have learnt to treat her deferentially too. When Dutchman Jaap Ramakar, the conference chairman, or the huge US ambassador, Stephen Ledogar, discuss a point with her in the corridors, they look like they're bowing attentively, although they could easily give the impression of looking down at her dimunitive figure. She told the United Kingdom's ambassador after he'd been particularly impertinent at a formal meeting: You of all people should know India can't be bullied into submission.

Ghose may have been just a seven-year-old girl at Bombay's Cathedral and John Conan School when India became independent but she doesn't take kindly to colonial attitudes. Perhaps, that can be attributed to her education at Viswa Bharati, Shantiniketan, where she went after graduating from Lady Brabourne College, Calcutta.

She isn't the only outstanding

performer in her family either: her eldest brother, Shankar Ghose, is executive director of the National Foundation for India, having retired as head of Sriram Foods. The second, Bhaskar Ghose, was director general of Doordarshan before becoming secretary in the ministries

of I&B and Culture. And her younger sister, Ruma Pal, is a judge at the Calcutta High Court.

Thus far, it was Bhaskar who hit the headlines, but each one has been an

outstanding achiever. Arundhati had a key place in the liberalisation process as

additional secretary (economic affairs) in the early