WITH F-16S ON THE TAIL
FLIGHT AI-1 Harshavardhana sailed through the sunlit stratosphere. In the presidential suite, president K.R. Narayanan was giving finishing touches to the speeches he would deliver in the course of his 15-day visit to Germany, Portugal, Luxembourg and Turkey. The First Lady rested, the First grand-daughter gambolled, ADCs and security czars clustered outside the First cabin.
The ebullient P.R. Kumaramangalam, Union minister for power, engaged in ideological banter with senior journalists. Kantha-sari clad Jayanti Natarajan, MP, chatted easily. Saifuddin Soz, MP, the ever-smiling Suresh Kurup, MP from Kerala, and the photographically-inclined John Fernandes, MP from Goa, dozed gently in their first class quarters. The champagne, of course, continued to flow and caviar had become an almost boring snack. A motley crew of officials, security staff, maid, attendants and journalists watched the tropics disappear faster than an Indian tax-payer's returns and entered the affluent air above Europe.
Suddenly fighter jets appeared on the wings of the Harshavardhana. Four F-4 Phantoms of the German Luftwaffe, two on either side, went shooting past, adjusting their speed to the presidential aircraft. Between foamy cloud and brilliant sun the bombers gave a salute, an airborne welcome from Germany to the supreme commander of India's armed forces. All heads of state are escorted in and out of countries by fighter planes. While steel-grey F-4s took us in and out of Germany, black F-16s handed us down and out of Portugal. At a luncheon in Lisbon, major-general Oliviera Simoes of the Portuguese air force recalled his experience as a young pilot commissioned to escort a VIP plane. A mix-up at the control room, a small language failure and the general had ended up following the wrong plane, which must have been a trifle alarmed at a fighter on its tail!
Presidential visits are a display of the pageantry of state. Ceremonial welcomes and departures, 21 gun salutes, twirling swords and booming drums. Our national anthem rendered by a Luxembourgois army band floated out into the coniferous slopes of the Ardennes from the Guillaume Square in Luxembourg. "Marhaba Askar!" (hello soldier) shouted the troop leader to saluting soldiers in Ankara. "Saoul!" (thanks!) they bellowed back. The presidential motorcade—stretch limo in the centre, a dozen escort bikes and cars, official Mercs and BMWs behind—travels at about 120 km, gliding through deferentially deserted streets. Reminiscent of a medieval king, visiting with his pennants and knights. But Narayanan's far too modern to attempt a monarchical style. He walked over to the security escort and shook hands with each of them, much to the anxiety of protocol.
INDOLOGY'S HUB
BONN is called "Benares on the Rhine", the first German city to institute a university chair in Indology. At Beethoven's birthplace, in Hitler's favourite Hotel—the Rhine-hotel Dreesen—to an audience of diplomats, policy wonks and elder statesmen, Narayanan gave a tough speech. India wanted to join the peace club not the war club and, in fact, was de facto abiding by the terms of the CTBT. (India has announced a moratorium on all N-testing), but he also spoke forthrightly on The Doctrine of Different Rights. Our independence movement had arisen precisely from a challenge to the concept that some had rights that others did not. Furthermore, secularism remained our basic principle. In the end the logic of Indian elections tames even the most extremist rhetoric."Today the BJP is forced to woo the Muslims." A standing ovation for the "casteless person" as a newspaper in Bonn described him. At a state banquet in Bonn, asserting India's commitment to a nuclear-free world he quoted from Kant: "The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." We couldn't help but feel proud of this soft-voiced scholar of integrity and tried to stand as upright as he did, when Jana gana mana rang out from German trumpets.
We were brought back to earth, of course, when after a meeting between German business leaders and the Indian delegation, a representative of Daimler-Benz said he wasn't worried about our democracy. He was only concerned about how he would do business with us in the relative absence of electricity and telephones.
BAYWATCH BREAK
BERLIN is a mighty metropolis, a combination of Athens and Moscow. Vast communist leviathans on one side, baroque churches and museums on the other. At the site of Checkpoint Charlie, a museum created by Rainier Hildebrandt documents the escapes that residents of the erstwhile GDR made into the western sector. The Brandenburg Gate dividing east and west Berlin stands as a symbol of the failure of socialism. As the president walked under it, grey hair and '50s bundgala passing under the "Gate of Peace", perhaps he was reminded of Harold Laski, his teacher at the London School of Economics in the decades when socialism was still young. "Socialism continues to be influential in the world," the president later told Outlook. "And there's no better place than Germany to learn of the social market economy. The market must be underpinned with social justice." The Berlin wall no longer exists, but a generation of Easterners face humiliation and job losses. "We live with the condescension of the West," says journalist Marita Elke.
For John Fernandes, MP from Goa, Berlin was not entirely without joy. He managed to obtain the autograph of baywatch babe Pamela Anderson, his neighbour at the Adlon hotel. We weren't disappointed either. Steven Spielberg, in town to receive an award, signed on our brochures and said he was happy that Amistad had been well received in India.
The First Lady unveiled a bust of Gandhi at a school which has decided to call itself Mahatma Gandhi School. (It was a toss-up between Gandhi, John Lennon and Hannah Arendt). All over the world, the mahatma's still our best export. "We don't think Gandhi belonged only to India," said principal Jurgen Kausche, "but to the whole world". "It always gives me such joy to speak to children," beamed the First Lady, diminutive beside a lanky blonde student. Gazing down at her, he responded, "And we will always hold your memory in honour."
PORT WINE PARTY /
THE Portuguese burst into warm-hearted gusto at the president's arrival. He responded in kind. "Our relations are as sweet and delicious as port wine," he chuckled amidst the ancient urbanity of Porto, second city of Portugal and home of the famous wine. A guard of honour processed somewhat uncoordinatedly around the president at the Praca de Imperio in Lisbon, in the shadow of the gothic Jeronimos cathedral. Jeronimos is the tomb of national poet Luis Vaz de Camoes and commemorates the great voyages of Portuguese adventurers: Vasco Da Gama to India, Cabral to Brazil. The ship of discovery is a Portuguese national icon. Wrote Camoes in the Lusidas, "Here you see the great machine of the world, ethereal and profound." It was the sea, the president mused, which brought India and Portugal together.
It is also the sea that keeps us apart. India refused to participate in the 500th anniversary celebrations of Da Gama's voyage because Goan MPs declared that he was an evil imperialist. But surely we should be more involved in a country where there are 30,000 Gujarati speakers from Mozambique and 50,000 Goans. And must all our pavilions—as seen in Expo '98 in Lisbon—look like half-hearted attempts at creating the lobby of the Ashoka Hotel? Narayanan skated over the Da Gama controversy: "We bear no grudges of history," he said.
Here's a submission to the venerable MEA: how about some people-friendly diplomacy, more contacts with NRIs, more citizen-to-citizen exchanges, and less wearying officialese about "enabling frameworks" and "complementary interests".
At the Ajuda palace banquet, lilies and roses flowered under glittering chandeliers. Guests were announced and they tripped up the red carpet to be presented to presidents Sampaio and Narayanan. Lace fluttered, the orchestra purred, cutlery tinkled. The Portuguese don't let even nukes spoil a good party. "I hope the Germans weren't too rude about security," whispered an elegant lady. "I've been so busy that I haven't had time to take my afternoon nap," the president laughed. The wine at one of the official meals? A Vidiguera 1990. Vidiguera is the birthplace of Da Gama. How's that for scoring a point, Mediterranean style?
GANDHI'S REPRESENTATIVE
NARAYANAN is passionate about the history and culture of different countries. He had chosen the itinerary himself: walking in the Black Forest in Baden Baden, cruising on the Bosphorus in Turkey, (while Natarajan perched on the prow and Soz battled the breeze), strolling in the ancient city of Ephesus in south Turkey or standing in the Aya Sofya museum in Istanbul. His speeches were free of platitudes: secularism a constant but also an emphasis on the ideals of knowledge of the Renaissance men. Of the need to find words for one's innermost beliefs.
At Humboldt University, Berlin, he said that the West should not imprison India in a romantic image. He described Turkey as the "great bridge between Europe and Asia". He wondered to Outlook why in India religious status is always given to those who are trying to create political theory and at Bilkent University he said globalisation leads paradoxically to a clinging to narrow identities. The duty of statesmen, he said, is to be aware enough of the past so as to never repeat its mistakes. His references ranged from Kant to Camoes and Barros. And always Nehru. "I wish I had the time to learn even more" he told students at Bilkent, "I am still working on the intellectual capital fund of my student days."
Reactions to him varied. Outside the Luxembourg town hall, a woman held up his picture and shouted, "Why this man make bomb?" But Schlang Josef, prisoner no.141556 from the Auschwitz concentration camp, doffed his cap. "I have seen the worst of mankind. Today I have come to see Gandhi's representative."
A BYZANTINE DREAM
THE president and the First Lady came back to old friends in Turkey—Narayanan had been ambassador here in the '70s. Said old friend Emel Dogramaci: "There was always something different about Usha and K.R. Narayanan." The First Lady recalled: "We worked hard for the Indo-Turkish Friendship Association in those days—the Turks were more aware of Pakistan than of 'Hindistan'."
Turkey was the pinnacle. Descendant of ancient Byzantium, with layers of civilisation from the veastern Roman empire to the Ottomans to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's modernity by diktat. Istanbul—built by Constantine stretching around three seas, gigantic, bursting, mosques adjoining the waterfront, bars adjoining gambling dens, belly dance and medieval archives, Roman ruins and Ottoman dazzle, entrepot of vice as well as classical striving—looks East as well as West. Narayanan was visibly moved.
"The beautiful women and brave and handsome men," "cities framed in history", "the colour of the culture of Turkey," he said on different occasions. At the Aya Sofya, the president declined to make a wish. "All my wishes have come true," he said.
The banks of the Bosphorus are the playground of the European aristocracy, gleaming villas with decks stretching into the water. In the evenings, you can see the elegant parties of the super-rich, wineglasses held aloft in the Istanbul sunset. At Izmir—ancient Smryna where Homer wrote the Iliad—India gifted little Begum, the baby elephant from Orissa, to the city. Begum looked a little unhappy in Izmir zoo and we pondered on the ethics of animal exchanges. But at least the infant quadruped received a presidential hug. In return for Begum, two Sivas Kangal pups travelled back with us on Harshavardhana.
As Delhi spun into view again, Natarajan must have the final word. "The president did India proud."
