The protocol division is vacuum-cleaning a blood-red Kashmiri carpet, and shortlisting the state emporia and globalized shopping malls where the once-toddler’s  begum will be taken for shopping, fawned over, and presented gifts including a Kashmiri shawl, kangri and a miniature houseboat.

  The foreign minister is diligently looking up the dictionary of synonyms for new adjectives and adverbs to use at Press briefings, as well as earnestly debating what head-dress to wear even as he has already decided to roll down his bushcoat sleeves.

  And the prime minister is in the throes of deciding whether to settle for an old Kavita or write a new one for the state banquet.

  Not quite the same as the visit of a lameduck American president, but a big thing all the same. The Americans are nodding in approval, and that for us is a big thing in itself. The bigger thing would be a full-tilt pat on the back and the biggest, a hearty pentagonal hug, and these too will come in good time.

  Time! That’s it. Time that has already changed “a dictator”, “a usurper”, “murderer of democracy”, “the architect of the bloody perfidy in Kargil” and the continuing chief patron of the terror and murder in Kashmir--changed him into an esteemed jackboot leader of a country which is still attached by a few resilient strings to the apron of another country whose friendship we crave and whose frowns make us do what that toddler did in his underpants in that haveli now being washed and scrubbed--the haveli, that is, not the underpants.

  So we shall welcome him with open arms and talk of various things like the bumper mango crop, the monkeyman scare, the unseasonal rains--definitely also Kashmir. Because he likes Kashmir and wants it. We will tell him we also like Kashmir not nearly as much as we used to when we were in the Opposition but still enough not to make a gift hamper of it, not as yet

  For now, could he please realise, we’ll tell him, that we cannot countenance giving away anything on religious grounds; we have a religious minority larger than his religious majority, and the Valley is not the only place where our minority is in the majority and so we need to be visionary and long-sighted and begin to talk of possibilities in those areas too. After all, we too have fundamentalists. If he feels homesick., we will suggest meeting some of them. The Students Islamic Movement of India, perhaps? We will inform him that they are among the closest we have to the Taliban, in case he didn’t know.

  We will also suggest a friendly cricket match--Executive Fundamentalists versus Democratic Mentalists. CNN, BBC and White House would lap up the video footage. Match-fixing? Nay, nay--we shouldn’t, we’ll tell him. Let the Americans do the fixing. We won’t stop them. We can’t. After all, they are the non-playing captain of both our teams and of course the first, the second and the third umpire rolled into one. He may say that the Chinese will mind it. We will say the point is well taken.

  So no cricket. Instead we will take the dialogue to dogs, and tell him how we wished he had brought his dogs along. Our Black Cats would have loved to walk them in Lodhi Gardens, as they do our VIPs. The doggies would have loved them too--the Gardens, not the Black Cats. Oh, the dogs were not invited? Next time maybe.

  Kashmir? Yes, of course, we will talk about Kashmir. We will explain to him that we would like to go about it step by step, somersault by somersault. His public opinion is of course fully prepared, over-prepared actually, has been for fifty years. But we here need time to wean our people away from our historical chant that Kashmir is an integral part of India, therefore non-negotiable, and all that tripe. Otherwise they--the people of India--will be angry. He must have heared of the recent state elections? They showed their anger.

  But we will assure his excellency that we shall not be deterred from making “innovations” over Kashmir. He must have read the musings from Kumarakom? No? We will send him a copy. We sent one to the noble members of a certain academy in Sweden. They liked it, but they want us to muse more. We shall, we shall, Inshallah! Just give us time. Let us complete our term. After that we won’t care--because after that nobody will care for us!

  *The author is a Veteran Journalist, based in New Delhi
 

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