Not that the journey has resulted in anything earthshaking so far. Apart from the bilateral with Nawaz Sharief and his UN speech, it has been a modest program for Vajpayee after a busy first couple of days. The only big ticket item was a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. A bilateral with Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz was bumped because of a scheduling clash. And there were a dozen other meetings with various foreign ministers.

So why didn't the Prime Minister return home after the first two days(Wednesday and Thursday) during which he finished most of his diplomatic program, instead of hanging around in New York till Monday and worrying himself about Bihar?

The ostensible reason is that he is slated to visit Paris on his way back, and the calendars of President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin did not open up till Tuesday. And it was considered impractical to fly back all the way to India and then return to France, a visit which is considered important because Paris has been relatively moderate in its reaction to India's nuclear test.

The upshot of all this was Indian officials were desperately trying to stitch together more meetings for the Prime Minister in New York, with little success. Officials said Vajpayee had an unscheduled meeting with Sri Lanka's Chandrika Kumaratunga. And another hastily arranged meeting with PLO's Yasser Arafat did not materialise -- because Arafat did not materialise.

But there was little else besides. A meeting with the President of Honduras wasreceived with snickers by the accompanying media, but as one official explained sotto voce, when you are trying to rebuild your international standing, no country is too small to sneeze at. Over the weekend, the Indians were ready to grab anything. But diplomacy closes shop on the weekends.

However, the unresolved mystery is why Vajpayee did not meet with President Clinton in New York. The official explanation is Vajpayee could not leave India till late last Tuesday and arrive in New York on Wednesday morning. Clinton had to leave New York for Washington on Tuesday.

But the underlying reason was neither side made any great attempts to schedule a meeting. One explanation was that when the two sides are still engaged in discussions at the ministerial and diplomatic level, it made no sense to throw the two leaders together.

Conspicuously too, there was no meeting between Vajpayee and the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who Indian officials say has been anything but temperate in her remarks aboutthe delicate nuclear question. Privately, officials said there were several reasons that dictated against a Vajpayee-Albright meeting.

First of all, the Indians believe they are engaged with Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott and Albright is out of the loop. Then, there is the question of protocol and Indians are sticklers for protocol. Vajpayee could not meet Albright, who has mostly been in New York, because his Pakistani counterpart had already met Clinton.

To top it all, the US does not entertain world leaders in Washington during UN sessions, so a trip to Washington was out (although some leaders like Nelson Mandela made a Washington trip after a detour to Canada).

The outcome of all this was that Vajpayee was exposed to an overdose of Indian community and academic functions over the weekend. A reception for the PM by Ambassador Naresh Chandra on Friday evening was followed by a Ravi Shankar concert.

Meetings with the American Associations of Physicians from India, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, IndiaHeritage Foundation, Asia Society, business leaders, and lobbyists, are on the cards.

Officials said the exchanges are needed to energise the community after the diplomatic sandbagging that followed the nuclear tests.

Unfortunately, the attempt to invigorate Indian diplomacy has not involved the US media. As always, New Delhi's foreign media relations has been sub-par. Aside from stories on the day of the Prime Minister's UN speech and subsequent editorials in the topic, and a brief story on CNN, Vajpayee got little exposure in the US media in his first visit to US as the chief executive of the world's largest democracy. Indian officialdom was content briefing the oversized Indian media contingent that is accompanying the Prime Minister (56 journalists).