When the news of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "impromptu" visit to Lahore broke, a bunch of bureaucrats, politicians and journalists were at a Christmas lunch hosted by a Union minister in his leafy Lutyens Delhi bungalow.
Most people at the gathering were taken by surprise and some, including a high-profile television news anchor, did not know how to react. Among the politicians were three Cabinet ministers, including the host, and a number of ruling party spokespersons, all of whom maintained that they came to know about the Lahore trip at the same time as the rest of the gathering. One wonders if they were deliberately kept out of the loop.
