Ruchi Ghanashyam was rarely alone in Pakistan.

As an Indian diplomat (the first Indian woman to be stationed at the Indian high commission in Islamabad, in fact), she was followed everywhere. So was every other person on the high commission’s staff, including the gardener, she adds, laughing.

Sometimes, they were taken in for “questioning”, quizzed about their colleagues, and “let go”.

It should have been scary, says Ghanashyam, 64. But it wasn’t. There was a sense that no one in the Pakistan establishment would dare touch an Indian diplomat. But tense words were still exchanged.

“I once reminded a Pakistani official that Indian women were not so easily intimidated; that we tackled unseemly characters on the bus going to college every day.”

There is similar bluntness, candour and humour in Ghanashyam’s first book, about her term in Pakistan during a particularly troubled time (1997 to 2000). An Indian Woman in Islamabad was released by Penguin Random House India in August.

At the time of that posting — which she opted for, she likes to stress — Ghanashyam was 37, and had 15 years of experience, including in Syria, Nepal and Belgium.

“I was interested in Islamabad because it is a challenging posting. It’s one of the most challenging relationships that India has, and I wanted to know more.”

She moved there with her husband AR Ghanashyam, also a diplomat, and their two sons, Anant and Aniket, then aged eight and 11. Finding ways to help their sons settle in would be one of the big early challenges.

The children were also often followed, she says.

There were other points of minor conflict, such as when Aniket’s school teacher complained that he kept standing up in class and arguing when anything unfavourable was said about India. “In his own little way, he felt obliged to say something back,” she says, smiling. “We didn’t say anything to him because we recognised that this whole thing was a challenge for him too. And if he managed to argue his case without actually getting into fights, we thought that was admirable.”

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The real drama would begin about a year in. In 1998, India carried out Operation Shakti, its second round of nuclear tests in Pokhran (the first round was Operation Smiling Buddha, in 1974). Anti-India sentiment bloomed.

Pakistan responded with tests of its own about two weeks later, but even so, the unthinkable began to happen. An Indian embassy official, for instance, was brutally assaulted outside his home. “This created a furore in India’s Parliament and assurances of safety were given,” Ghanashyam says, “but everyone on ground was shaken.”

About 18 months later, India’s diplomatic forces would be tested as they rarely have been before or since. The Ghanashyams were in Islamabad when the passenger flight IC 814 was hijacked by the Pakistan-based terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) on December 24, 1999.

By December 26, it was decided that AR Ghanashyam, who was counsellor for trade and economy, would travel to Kandahar ahead of the team of Indian negotiators working for the release of the 191 people on board.

“Since we were generally posted together, we usually ended up working during the holidays, while others went home to India,” Ghanashyam says. “That’s how he ended up on the team.”

The hijackers demanded that India release 36 Pakistani prisoners, exhume and return the body of HuM founder Sajjad Afghani, and pay a ransom of over $200 million, in $100 bills.

The negotiations that played out over the next five days are recounted in harrowing detail by AR Ghanashyam in the book.

The Indian team led by intelligence officer Ajit Doval was finally able to reduce the demands to three prisoners, in exchange for the 191 hostages, one of whom had been killed.

A new six-part miniseries about the hijacking, currently streaming on Netflix “is, to be sure, a highly fictionalised version of events,” Ruchi Ghanashyam says.

The Hindu code names of the hijackers are accurate. “I don’t think that should be a reason for anyone to doubt that they were Pakistani. But there are things which they have shown that are just not possible,” she adds. “Although I have no knowledge of what exactly happened in Kathmandu (where the plane first took off), for instance, they show an officer from the embassy there carrying a weapon. No embassy officer carries a weapon.”

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The book isn’t all geopolitical drama. It weaves in endearing details of everyday life too.

An entire chapter is dedicated to the time Ghanashyam and her husband went in search of the fabled Karachi halwa that no one in Karachi seemed to have heard of. Finally, at a famous sweet shop in that city, a perplexed shopkeeper invited them to look for it on the shelves; perhaps it was known by another name here?

They found it! And found the answer. It turned out that Karachi halwa in Karachi is called Bombay halwa, Ghanashyam says, laughing.

In moving passages, she also talks about the dear friends she made across the border. These include a burly tailor nicknamed Masterji, who always delayed her orders, but sent a salwar-kameez over as a gift, after her return to India; and her landlord, Khan Saheb, who was so worried about her family’s safety during a period of tense standoffs in Kargil that he offered to post “his gunmen” in front of her home.

“Over the years, Pakistan has been responsible for cross-border terrorism in India. There’s no doubt they are the aggressors,” Ghanashyam says. “But the warmth and friendship of the people is indisputable too.”

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After Pakistan, the diplomat served at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN in New York, then in Ghana and in South Africa. She retired as high commissioner of India to the UK, in 2020.

The UK posting was one of the most eventful, she says, simply because that country has a larger and more vocal diaspora than anywhere else she has served. “Developments in India attract attention and sometimes adverse reactions there, often from the Pakistani-origin community,” Ghanashyam says. “We faced multiple demonstrations. On one occasion, a window pane was broken.”

In retirement, she has served as a columnist, writing on foreign affairs. She still loves to travel, but it’s never going to be the same, she adds, smiling.

“Now we go as tourists and no longer delve into the politics, economy or culture of the people. Perhaps that’s what I miss most... living among different people in their countries, immersing myself in their cultures and discovering who they are.”

Read Also: An Indian Woman in Islamabad: Read an exclusive excerpt from Ruchi Ghanashyam’s new book