Flights of fancy

Kingdom for a horse

Having visited Saudi Arabia as foreign minister in January 2001, Jaswant Singh can’t but remember the red carpet laid out in Riyadh. The trip ended on a bittersweet trail. Sweet, because the power behind the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Abdullah, recognising Jaswant’s first love, gifted him a top-of-the-line Arabian colt and filly. Bitter, because rules back home forbade Singh keeping the horses, although he is said to have later bought them from the toshakhana.

But much more than horses will be on the cards when Singh returns to Riyadh in October, as foreign minister and co-chair of the Indo-Saudi joint commission. It promises to be an interesting trip, what with the post-9/11 cracks deepening in the make-up of, for want of a better word, ‘‘schizoid’’ nation. Saudi Arabia’s violent denial of rights to its women as well as its expatriate minorities, is about as well-known as the fact that 15 of the 19 WTC hijackers were Saudi. But it’s also true that an internal debate is seeking to temper radical Islamists. Especially after the US war on neighbouring Iraq, the chickens — not the horses — could be coming home to roost.

Visa power

Taking advantage of Sonia Gandhi’s novice refusal to stoop and pick up power lying on the streets of New Delhi (ask Ambika Soni for the reference to Comrade Lenin in Leningrad, her husband V.B. Soni retired as an IFS officer), Prime Minister Vajpayee has a wonderful next couple of months ahead, doing what he loves best — foreign policy.

The season begins with a bang: the first ever visit by an Israeli prime minister from September 9-11. Following this Vajpayee will host King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan in his lair on Racecourse road in the capital. Then comes the big UN GA visit to New York in mid-September via Turkey, when the PM speaks at the UN on September 25, Pervez Musharraf probably a day earlier. In October, there’s Thailand and the Asean summit in Bali, Indonesia, where a free trade agreement will be signed 12 spectacular months after it was announced. Come November, the PM will be in Moscow — the agreement to buy the Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov, is in the final stages — and maybe a couple of Central Asian states.

Ugly (Indo)-American

Six second-generation Indian-Americans interning for some of America’s best-known members of Congress — including Hillary Clinton — were in town last week, hoping to rediscover the mother country. The MEA did its bit to promote bilateral relations by laying out the carpet for Hari Kondabolu (for Clinton), Anjali Shaykher for Mark Foley, Veena Srinivasa for Sherrod Brown, Harin Contractor with the Democrats National Committee, Sheena Jain for Robert Matsui and Naresh Tanna for Frank Pallone, founder of India caucus.

But a reporter from this newspaper didn’t reckon with the rudeness of the young Americans. They blithely cancelled appointments without warning, were irritable when they came on the phone and absented themselves from the norms of civillity. Was this a representative sample of the future American leadership? Or did these Indian-Americans believe they could simply come ‘‘home’’ and ride roughshod over natives? Hold on though, there’s a sting in the tail. One of the kids actually had the nerve to ask if the profiles could be published in the North American edition of the Indian Express!