Footprints on the Sands

“Lives of great men all remind us, We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time”. These lines are from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”. They are the inspiration for this book. We all leave our footprints on the sands of time. Some are transient while some others are more durable. In the sunset years of his life, the author reflects which of his initiatives as a civil servant have proved to be sterile and which others have borne ample fruits. Footprints on the sands is a chronological narrative of the evolution of a civil servant from his days as a district officer, through his stint in the State Government, moving to his final destination as a Secretary to Govt of India, This truly represents his ascent from operational to managerial and thence to conceptual skills. The early chapters are anecdotal in style but the later ones are more cerebral. This is not just another memoir consisting of random recollections of a civil servant. The book transcends the boundaries of an autobiography in as much as it is replete with several well researched monographs on matters germane to the knowledge domain of the author’s work area. The knowledge domain keeps changing with assignments handled by the author. The growing complexity of modern day management is thoughtfully shared by the author with the readers. These are in the form of monographs on general, historical, management, technology related topics. The noteworthy ones are as follows: Nawabs of Awadh and their Landmark Monuments ; Century long Shia-Sunni Rancour and it’s Resolution by 1998 Accord; Varanasi’s Antiquity on International Timeline; Kala Bhawan Varanasi -A treasure-trove of Indian Miniatures, History of AMU and AMUSU.