Sushma Swaraj called for a cake to mark birthdays of three ASEAN foreign ministers. (Express)
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Known to remember birthdays of her counterparts, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj pulled off a surprise for the visiting foreign ministers from the ASEAN countries. On Thursday, when the 10 ASEAN leaders, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, went for a walk at the Mughal Garden after the retreat at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Swaraj and the ministers from some of these countries stayed back.
Swaraj surprised the foreign ministers as she called for a cake. When the ministers asked why the cake, she said it was to celebrate the birthdays of three ministers present in the room. While the ministers from Singapore and Thailand had their birthdays that day, the Brunei foreign minister’s birthday was on January 23.
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The ministers, who were all gifted angavastrams from Assam, cut the chocolate cake in the yellow drawing room of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Officials pointed out that Swaraj’s eye for detail impressed many of her counterparts.
For January 26, she told officials to arrange for shawls for each of the visiting leaders and their spouses so that they would be warm while watching the Republic Day parade. “Though there was some heating on the stage, we arranged for the shawls,” a senior official said.
Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 25 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting on foreign affairs for more than 17 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More
