New Delhi, Jan. 12 -- It's very easy to judge V.K. Krishna with his long record of pluses and minuses; on what he accomplished he commands plaudits, on what he blotched up, he deserves strictures, writes former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh in his meticulously researched biography of the former Defence Minister, who emerges as a larger than life figure in spite of his greatest setback, the Chinese invasion of 1962.

"Krishna Menon's achievements were gigantic, his failures monumental. His intellectual strengths were awesome, his emotional equilibrium pathetic. He was the delight of his crisis, the despair of his admirers. He reached dizzying heights of fame, plumbed to depths of notoriety. It is very easy to judge Krishna Menon. He has a l...