[2] As a Deputy Secretary in the Development Department of the Madras Government, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1946 New Year Honours.

In 1953, he joined the Ministry of Finance and headed the Economic Affairs Department, responsible for development and co-ordination of foreign aid programmes.

In 1958, he was appointed Under-Secretary for Special Political Questions in the U.N., to work directly under the U.N. Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld, and with Nobel laureate Ralph Bunche.

A vocalist, scholar and connoisseur of Carnatic music, he also wrote an English translation of the Mahābhārata based on selected verses in 1965.

His translation was criticized by James L. Fitzgerald, St. Purander Das Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Classics at Brown University, as being "dry and oversimplified", but praised it as a "useful recapitulation of the bare bones of the story".