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YATRA
BUZZ
The
Quirky Side
First
they fought over numbers. Indian industrialists were not amused when they
learnt that only nine among them were invited to the White House banquet.
But trust them to pull the right strings. When six more managed to extract
invites with some help from the PMO and Ambassador Naresh Chandra, the
bizmen were faced with another problem: dress. Most of the 15 invitees
- Shashi Ruia of Essar and Sunil Mittal of Bharti Telecom included-did
not have the mandatory tuxedo. Help was at the nearest shopping mall,
where they vied with one another to grab the best dinner jacket. The damage?
$200-$500 each.
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| Dress
preferences of some Indian officials showed disdain for protocol |
The story
was the same for officials and mediapersons accompanying Vajpayee. Seventeen
of the 48 journalists were invited for the banquet, but most didn't have
a tuxedo or a bandgala. So some hired the dinner jackets while others
like Ashwini Minna, editor of Punjab Kesari, coughed up $950 to buy one.
The pm's Media Adviser H.K. Dua and mea Joint Secretary R.S. Jassal did
neither. They secured special permission and arrived in lounge suits.
Prepared
speeches for the ageing prime minister have become rather routine now.
The function organised by the Indian community in Washington was no exception.
But when Vajpayee began to address the 2,500-strong gathering, his speech
writers were in for a surprise. The prime minister put away the carefully
worded draft in his pocket and spoke extempore in Hindi in his inimitable
style. For close to an hour, he held forth-and at the end of it, it seemed
the audience still hadn't had enough.
While all
the 28 members in the prime minister's delegation were given personal
mobile phones in the US, there was a crunch when it came to cars. Apart
from Vajpayee, only Jaswant Singh had a car to himself for the drive from
JFK Airport to the ultra-plush Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. Brajesh
Mishra had to squeeze in with Vajpayee's Private Secretary Ajay Bisaria
and personal physician Ramesh Kumar. And Lalit Mansingh shared a car with
N.K. Singh and Dua. Other senior officials like Alok Prasad, Jassal, Kanchan
Gupta and Sudheendra Kulkarni had to make do with a mini coach, something
unheard of during previous prime ministerial visits.
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If
there was one word to summarise Putin+s style, it is Realnosti---Russian
for get real---says INDIA TODAY Deputy Editor Chengappa in
