In a letter on 4 August 1987, as I left the PMO to take up an assignment in Lakshadweep, classified by the MHA as a ‘punishment posting’, Rajiv Gandhi wrote: “Thank you also for your hard work and cheerful assistance over the last five years; first with my mother, and then with me. We shall miss you, especially in our forays into the countryside. You are going to an important assignment. I look forward to seeing you in Lakshadweep at the winter meeting of the Island Development Authority.”

A paradise set in the heart of the Arabian Sea is the archipelago of Lakshadweep –Sanskrit for ‘one hundred thousand islands’. A Union Territory since 1956, this tiny chain of 36 coral islands of which 10 are inhabited, with an estimated population in 1985 of 44,000, is home to a unique civilisation.

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