Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Live in the present

WHERE MONEY TALKS

The erasure of bitterness is the outstanding feature of today's Vietnam.

They were celebrating the fall of Dien Bien Phu in French wine. It was also a celebration of the 1972 Spring Offensive when North Vietnam attacked across the 17th parallel and the Americans retaliated by bombing Haiphong and Hanoi.

But whether yesterday's enemy was France or the US, both are today's best friends for the gathering of uniformed officers, white-bearded veterans and smartly suited artists in the gallery in Hanoi's Pho Trang Thi running along the bottom of Hoan Kiem lake.

The erasure of bitterness is the outstanding feature of today's Vietnam, especially for a visitor from India where we are still fighting the East India Company, seeing its incarnation in the US. The war took toll of 500,000 civilians, 240,000 South Vietnamese and a million North Vietnamese soldiers, to say nothing of 58,000 Americans. Yet, it has left no rancour. American dollars are as much currency as Vietnamese dongs.

That struck me even in 1969 when the war still raged, and I covered the Paris peace talks that Henry Kissinger arranged. The petite Madame Ngyuen Thi Binh, representing Ho Chi Minh's regime, took an evening press conference every day in the Qaui d'Orsay. Officially, she was a stickler for nationalist protocol. A question asked in English had to be translated into French and then into Vietnamese before she deigned to answer.

But sometimes the woman of culture triumphed over the politician, and she began answering in French even before the cumbersome translating was complete. I remember one occasion when the hall burst out laughing because recollecting herself, Madame Ngyuen Thi Binh clapped a hand over her mouth with "Ooh, la la!" like any Frenchwoman. The gossip was that she owned a house in the outskirts of Paris where she disappeared for weekends.

But then, the great Uncle Ho epitomised the theory that a patriot has to live abroad before he can truly serve the motherland. Like Mahatma Gandhi's years in South Africa, Ho spent 30 years in England, France, Hong Kong, China and the Soviet Union before returning to Vietnam in 1941.

Gavin Young, a former colleague on the Observer, London, used to tell of interviewing the actress Mae West who claimed to have had an affair with Ho while he worked humbly in London's Ritz Hotel, and she was staying there. There are other stories about his numerous lovers, French wife and son born to a woman of Vietnam's Tay minority.

What they add up to is a singular freedom of the spirit, an absence of the puritanism that we associate with nationalism. In many ways, Hanoi looks like Kolkata used to when pavements were wide and shaded by trees; in many ways Hanoi with its pavement cafes has the feel of a suburban French town.

The cafes bear noting because they are not expensively fashionable as in London. They are modest little establishments, one after the other, where ordinary Vietnamese gather to drink iced coffee and cognac and play a version of draughts.

If Vietnam can forget, it can also remember. That explains an Indian presence far exceeding the Indian population of perhaps 1,200 people, mostly "" about 1,000 "" in Ho Chi Minh City.

It's a presence that goes back to the Hindu kingdom of Champa that flourished in central Vietnam from the 2nd to the 15th centuries. At Dang anh Tien, an antiquarian's not a stone's throw from where they were celebrating Dien Bien Phu and the Spring Offensive, I was shown a Sivalingam that the owner claimed was from Champa. The price was $200,000.

Modern India was symbolised by A K Antony, India's defence minister, who was the chief guest at Monday's lunch at the appropriately named Army Hotel. The host was the Indian Business Chamber, whose chairman, R Ravikumar, a restaurant owner and trader, says that India has great prospects for trade and investment in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are especially keen on Indian investment in port development, real estate (the market is booming), power generation and pharmaceuticals. It was interesting that in reeling off his statistics, Ravikumar included the diaspora: Indians in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand see themselves as one community.

No one says it, but India is honoured for its moral support in the sixties and seventies. No one says it either, but the US is honoured because it alone can help Vietnam realise the dream for which it fought Chinese (for 1,000 years!), French and American imperialists. It's a humbling reminder of unsentimental pragmatism that Indians could learn with profit.

sunanda.dattaray@gmail.com