'Good Morning Mr. President'

One doesn't know what to make of the recent media-reports. Not that one canbe very certain, at the best of times, but recent reports are rather intriguingto say the least.

I am not talking about conspiracy theories in Pakistani papers or by theMaoists in Nepal about the RAW and CIA or the alternate ones by our ever-resourceful Bal Thackeray, but those which can be, let's say, relied upon.

First you had the reports in Outlook itself that in the wee hours of June 2,after the massacre at the Royal Nepal palace, Pakistani envoy to Nepal FauziaNasreen had called up Islamabad and had a brief conversation, partly in Urdu andpartly in English -- some 12 hours before the palace announcement -- that"the murderer has been pronounced king".

Then there was this recent curious case of the White House spokesperson Ari Fleischerannouncing as early as 12.55 pm on June 18 (US time) that "the United States fully supports the upcoming July 14th meeting between India and Pakistan." This, when the prime minister was heard telling reportersthat dates for the summit would be known in a couple of days. (The hasty MEAbriefing came late that night, June 19)

And now Vajpayee's phone-call to Musharraf yesterday which seems to haveprovided more grist to the hyper-active mills of at least two prominentPakistani papers.

According to the reports, Vajpayee is said to have begun his conversationyesterday morning with General Musharraf -- when the gentleman named Mr. Rafiq Tarar was still very much the official president of Pakistan -- with the greeting: "Good morning, Mr.President".

At which point the General is supposed to have protested: "Mr. PrimeMinister, I'm not the President"

And here the details get a bit fuzzy. By one account, Vajpayee is supposed to have persisted in congratulating him. (We do notknow whether or not the intent was to show-off our improved intelligence, sothat we are not thought to be as clueless as the Kargil goof-ups would have theGeneral believe. But perhaps, more likely, the Prime Minister, given his avuncular image, was just trying to get pally)

Urdu daily Jang had a slight variation to offer, though, according to which Musharraf issaid to have asked: "Mr. Prime Minister, you are congratulating me forwhat?"

Vajpayee: "Mr. President, I'm congratulating you beforehand on assumingthe office of President after a few hours."

We are told that Musharraf here apparently decided to play along, accepted the congratulations and reciprocated thegesture: "Mr Prime minister, I too thank you beforehand for thecongratulations."

The Prime Minister is then said to have told the General that he wasanxiously looking forward to his visit to India, beginning on July 14, and thathe would be received with full honours.

"Thank you, Prime Minister Saheb. Our meeting would be fruitless withoutmeaningful talks on resolving the Kashmir issue," Gen. Musharraf is said tohave replied.

"Certainly Kashmir will be discussed, along with other issues," Vajpayee is supposed to have come back, to which the good General apparentlyretorted: "Surely I will discuss other issues too, apart from the main Kashmirdispute."

(Kashmir dispute? Now that is something we can all agree upon. Onehopes. After all the dispute is over the nature of the dispute.)

And suitably enough, after perhaps smirking over the subtle semantic differences between "Kashmir and other issues" and "Other issues and Kashmir" both leaders are supposed to have agreed thatstatements which could cloud their summit meeting should not be issued.

"The rhetoric should be checked" as the operating phrase wentyesterday.

But soon after that, we were back to whether or not Jammu and Kashmir is anintegral part of India with Pakistan foreign office issuing yet anotherstatement. This ad-nauseum "Is, is-not, is-too" reminiscent of twopre-teens squabbling over whose is bigger or some such, is not exactly a verypromising sign by two statesmen set to rewrite history (whatever that means).

The chatterati are having a field day, and no body seems to be in agreementeven over how long the blasted phone-call lasted. While one paper claimed it wasfor 16 minutes, the other said it went on for 20 minutes. Whereas the MEAspokesman put the duration of the call at around 6 minutes.

But this much all seem to be agreeing on -- when Vajpayee called up Musharrafyesterday, it was around 10:45 a.m. and Muhammad Rafiq Tarar still the Presidentof Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf was sworn in as President only at 4.30 p.m.

At least unlike the first time, after the Gujarat earthquake, when they aresupposed to have spoken to each other, there is no confusion over who calledwhom up.

MEA spokesperson has stated that the Prime Minister had made it clear that he was congratulatingMusharraf in anticipation and that it was based on information gathered throughIndian sources in Islamabad.

Now that we are talking about talks without aids, it seems we are in forinteresting times about who said what to whom when, and who replied how.(Perhaps they'd be carrying their spy-cams?)

Wags are already singing ranjish hi sahii. Appropriate too, given therecent exchange of epistles between Vajpayee and Mehdi Hassan.

Rest of the country? Well, there's music alright, but there aren't very manyghazals or geets.

What you have instead are gun-shots. And the dirges in faraway Northeast. And the constant wail of the valley that the deafening sound of conch shells fromAyodhya threaten to drown out, now that UP is going to polls soon.