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Within the state, he is always forgiven for his sins. People did so even when he was alive. Paradoxically, one of the most memorable photographs of the Lok Sabha elections is the one from Thiruvananthapuram that has Marxist stalwarts AK Gopalan and EMS Namboodiripad standing alongside Menon, flashing winning smiles. Menon bucked a pro-Congress wave and won as an independent candidate that year with the support of those who were at the receiving end of his diabolical stance as a high-profile Congress leader and confidant of Nehru 12 years earlier.

In fact, the Left in India always respected him as a fellow traveller and that explains why communist veterans like Promode Dasgupta and Jyoti Basu were delighted to offer him the Midnapore seat in the Lok Sabha bypoll in which Menon won, earning, overall, the rare honour of having won elections from three different corners of the country, starting with the victories from Bombay North in and as a Congress candidate.

Even at the height of his glory and power, Menon evoked extreme reactions with his propensity to win friends and foes alike—a trait of his that Ramesh dwells upon at length citing numerous examples all through this page work that draws extensively from newly declassified papers, archives and from personal correspondence available with the Menon family.

A few years ago, a noted editor wondered why we had a road in the national capital named after Menon. The question shocked someone like me who had attended a school founded by Menon, but was par for the course for the editor who started off as a defence and foreign affairs reporter and was perhaps less aware of political history.

Trapped between multitudes that make a devil out of him and those who tirelessly whitewash him over certain affinities, this book is a delight for anyone who wants to know the man behind the maze of myriad images.

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Ramesh does do justice to Menon whose failures are often magnified, and achievements overlooked. The book also scrutinises his follies that put India in a bad spot in the war. Menon had to resign shortly afterwards to save his mentor and friend Pandit Nehru from further embarrassment, first from the defence portfolio and then from the ministry.

This book, armed with insights from new documents, also looks at certain unforgotten feats of Menon as a UN envoy who has successfully negotiated conflicts and diplomatic rivalries involving the US, China, Korea and other countries. With his tall built, hard, chiseled features and hawk-like gaze that made him hard to miss in a crowd, he was widely networked and had a knack for striking up new ties among diplomats, celebrities and heads of states worldwide.

Driven, hardworking and ambitious, Menon often neglected his health to hop across continents, leaving his footprint in one issue after the other as a top-notch diplomat.