Calling cards

It’s going to be a hospitable winter in New Delhi as four important world leaders come calling. Jyoti Malhotra goes behind the scenes to find that all stops are being pulled out for the visits

Michelle and Barack, Carla and Nicholas, Svetlana and Dmitry. From three continents over the next eight weeks, three of the world’s most powerful couples will get a (photo)-opportunity to demonstrate their commitment, companionship and — dare I say it, — love, when they cuddle and kiss and renew their vows in front of the Taj Mahal.

It’ll be an East meets West moment, just the right time to bury Rudyard Kipling (at last), provide fodder for many an erudite essay in both poetry and geopolitics, and perhaps spawn a Bollywood film or two.

Wen Jiabao and Zhang Beili, straight from Beijing, are said to be still dithering about keeping their date with Agra. But if they do confirm, perhaps Prasoon Joshi could write a native version of “We Are the World”, have Benetton sponsor the ad film (“United Colours of Hindustan”), and put up a series of hoardings that begin at South Block and go all the way to the Maurya Sheraton hotel where all four power couples are planning to stay during their tryst with Dilli in November-December.

Hilltop party
Truth is, nobody stays at the Rashtrapati Bhawan anymore. Time was when the grand old building, built in the Empire style with just the right amount of Indianesque kitsch, hosted kings and emperors, democratically elected presidents and prime ministers from all over the globe. Jackie Kennedy was once here, as was Leonid Brezhnev. But now, it is said, the morning tea gets cold by the time it reaches the guest’s room, and there’s even a curfew.

So much better to stay in a five-star hotel, carve your name on the wooden bench at the Bukhara, dine out on a dal makhni-kebab-tikka platter created in your honour, and check out both pool and discotheque after you’re done with signing strategic partnerships on parchment with Mont Blanc ink pens you would really like to keep as a memento from your visit to India.

There’s still a couple of things, though, that only Rashtrapati Bhawan can do. The first is the ceremonial reception in the forecourt, when Messrs Obama, Sarkozy and Medvedev — arriving on November 8, December 6 and December 21, respectively — will march to the single drum roll as they inspect a guard of honour on the red carpet. The other is the banquet, a sit-down affair around the long table on the first floor, where butlers with paunches and starched turbans that belong to the Raj era ply you with food and fruit juice — pomegranate resembling red wine, coconut water or sweet lime resembling white wine, and plain water that is either Bisleri or has been purified through reverse-osmosis in the huge tanks installed in RB’s cavernous kitchens.

Nobody drinks alcohol in Rashtrapati Bhawan or at any other state reception in India. It’s always been like that, at least since 1947. The solid crystal glassware as well as the crockery are embossed with the Ashok chakra emblem, a reminder not only of India’s ancient civilisation but also, perhaps, of the great emperor’s spartan ways after the debilitating war of Kalinga.

These days, though, a frisson of excitement is running through that venerable building where President Pratibha Patil lives. For the first time ever, an events management company, Wizcraft, has been hired to manage the banquet that Patil is hosting for Obama. Wizcraft has just emerged from the chrysalis of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games, both fantastic affairs that redeemed the faith India’s middle-class had in itself. And now, the ministry of external affairs, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (which is part of the MEA) and Rashtrapati Bhawan have all teamed up to ask Wizcraft to manage The Event.

All lips are sealed all around, but here’s the beef, only it won’t be served. India’s most powerful, most interesting, most glamorous and most able to pull strings — The Golden 200 — have been invited to attend the banquet for Obama. They will arrive at 7.30 pm sharp on the evening of November 8 — the American Prez would have kept his date with the representatives of India’s teeming millions that morning at a joint session of Parliament, whose winter session has been specially advanced so that BO can address us over specially installed teleprompters — and proceed to the East Lounge on the ground floor. Mind you, this is not the Banquet Hall that is usually turned out for plebeian heads of state on the first floor — what Sarkozy and Medvedev will get — but a large enough room to hold several round tables, one end of which will be dominated by a stage. Wen Jiabao, in his capacity as a premier, will be fed at Hyderabad House, a gorgeous building off India Gate that was built for a mistress of the Nizam of Hyderabad From 8 pm to 9.30 pm, India’s Most Wanted will sup on chicken, korma, fish and vegetables, rounded off with moong dal halva and such like. Somewhere in the interim, Patil and Obama, as heads of the world’s largest and oldest democracies, respectively, will make a speech each. So far, the script has been sarkari. Then the private sector will take over. Let The Show Begin!

For the next hour, a cultural evening choreographed by Wizcraft, showcasing the best of India’s cultural heritage, will unfold. Music. Dance. Percussion. A moveable feast that will remind you, gently, that it is India’s civilisational strength that reinforces the democratic spirit, that it is not really a surprise that this is the only functioning democracy in Asia between Japan on one end and Israel on the other — and everyone knows who balances the budgets of those two nations — and that when Indira Gandhi ordered the first nuclear test as far back as 1974, India’s scientists at Pokharan sent back to her that most famous cryptic message: The Buddha has smiled.

Looking at us
Here’s the other message: India’s robust liberalism continues to be built on the back of a rising rupee. The G-20 at Gyeongju, the other day, only acknowledged what the world has been saying for some time, when it increased India’s percentage share of votes at the IMF, that a powerful India is good for the world.

That is why the world is here in India this winter. It’s the economy, stupid. Michelle and Barack Obama will kick off the season — and perhaps their shoes when they check out the Taj — to be followed by Sarkozy and Medvedev. Barack wants India to buy fighter planes, nuclear reactors, potato chips — anything — from the US, as long as it creates jobs back home and he returns from his journeying abroad with his hands somewhat full. Likely to lose the House of Representatives in mid-term elections on November 2, just before he embarks on his Indian journey, analysts say Obama needs someone to hold his hand at this delicate period in his life. If India can…he won’t forget.

The PM would also have just returned from Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Vietnam when he welcomes The Big Three in Delhi. Meanwhile, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao will come in December to settle misperceptions on Kashmir and tell Delhi that one way to dismantle mistrust is to push for greater integration of the Indian and Chinese economies.

Wen’s wife, Zhang Beili, is in fact a jewellery designer of note back home in China — she was formerly vice-president of the Chinese Jewellery Association and CEO of Beijing Diamond Jewelleries Co — and is said to highly appreciate the cut and polish of Indian diamonds. Perhaps, India will also quietly push for the release of 18 diamond businessmen, all completely vegetarian and hailing from Palanpur, Gujarat, who have been in Chinese judicial custody for more than six months because large quantities of diamonds were found on their person in Shanghai this January, which they could not explain. (Of course, the stones were meant for the Chinese black market.)

As for Dmitry Medvedev and his childhood sweetheart Svetlana, India is more or less an unknown quantity, especially as Dmitry is not old enough to remember the Soviet days and therefore its ultra-special relationship with India. Not that it matters — the colour of the rouble and the rupee are business-neutral. India paid top dollar for Russia’s secret help through all those early, post-Cold War years in keeping several nuclear reactors, like Tarapur, afloat with nuclear fuel and providing technologies to help launch its PSLV/GSLV satellites. Now Russia wants to build several more nuclear power plants at Kudankulam — a proposed visit by Medvedev to the site in December has been shelved in favour of Hyderabad, as Russia is keen on learning from India’s IT experience — as well as lobby for several defence deals.

There’s one more reason to log on to India these days. As China flaunts its growing wealth and postures aggressively on the world stage — frightening Japan over the Senkaku Islands, challenging the US in the Yellow Sea, scaring off the ASEAN over the Spratlys in the South China Sea — Beijing is behaving like a young adult on a big ramp.

The world is now asking India — rambunctious, noisy, anarchic, corrupt, messy, but also able to meld its ethnic, religious, caste and colour differences into a functioning whole — to stand up and provide a 21st-century example of the Middle Path. Not like the capitalist, free-marketeering economies of the West, but neither like the communist dictatorships in the East.

With the Buddha, India’s done this before. And China has learnt from it.