As the mercury rises in what purports to be the hottest Indian summer in decades, cool, cool America would rather distance itself from nuclear New Delhi and embrace its Anglo-Saxon cousins. Predictable? Check out only the third survey since the end of the Cold War a decade ago by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations for a double dose of the game you once played in your childhood: Love. Like. Hate. Adore.

This could be serious business, though. The Chicago survey, only the seventh in the past 25 years (it was carried out over the last three months of 1998), called upon its public to generate a ``Thermometer Rating for Countries''. Those surveyed had to keep in mind the ``hot-cold at 50'' subtext.

Canada at 72 emerged top of the pops, followed by Great Britain at 69, Italy at 62, Mexico at 57 and Germany at 56. Both Japan and France, nations Americans love tolove-hate, are at 55, while South Korea and Poland straddle the latitude at 50.

Hot, hot India falls at the cooler end of the temperature scale with 46 points (along with Saudi Arabia and Nigeria), barely nicked by China at 47, while Pakistan is even colder with 42. Only Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Iraq are colder, four nations Washington loves to dub the world's ``rogue states''.

The gravity of the situation, Philip Marlowe would say, calls for a ``Big Rethink''. Especially if India and the US should, and could, be ``natural allies'', a phrase used by that Great Communicator, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, only some eight months ago in New York. Marlowe, though, if he'd only watched the sun go down over the badlands of India, may have thought of other instruments besides the Thermometer. Such as Barometer, which usually measures (atmospheric) ``pressure''.

The last word is in great currency at the moment, as it happens, in the corridors of government. Bureaucrats in the Big Five ministries of externalaffairs, finance, industry, commerce and defence are stirred into action at its mention, sometimes even shaken. Pressure to sign the CTBT, roll back the Agni programme, underwrite big projects, disinvest at the hands of capitalists...all this ``pressure'' is believed to emanate from Washington, a city not far from Chicago, where the story about this foreign policy survey first began.

Interestingly, the Chicago survey throws up its own paradoxes. For example, even as the `Thermometer' rating gives Saudi Arabia only a lowly 46 points, another part of the same survey, called `Perceived US Vital Interests Around the World' accords it the third highest spot with 77 points. Japan fares similarly (87 per cent on the `vital interests' category and 55 in the `Thermometer' category), so does Russia (77 per cent vs 49 per cent), and China (74 vs 47 per cent). Only Israel, that death-do-us-apart ally of the US, fares within equitable reach of the two questions: 69 per cent vs 55 per cent.

Some would say thatparadoxes actually resolve contradictions: meaning, Americans would perceive oil to be a strategic issue in the relationship with Saudi Arabia, but not care too much about the ways of the Saudis themselves, who they feel are determinedly hovering in the twilight zone of the Dark Ages.

China's $60-billion trade surplus with the US similarly ensures that `perceived vital interest' pegs that nation at a high 74 points, while `Thermometer' ratings give it 47 points. Japan's trade wars with the US (in which Tokyo has usually emerged the winner) could also account for the trans-continental difference in survey points. It's usually true. You can't really like someone who makes more money than you.

Not surprisingly, India stands at a lowly 36 points in the `vital interest' ratings. Shockingly, France bags 37 points. Even Afghanistan (at 45 points), Cuba (50 points) and Bosnia (51 points) score higher on this scale.

But when all the figures are collated and all the graphs plotted, it may be time to return to thebody copy of the Chicago survey. ``As the twentieth century closes,'' says John Reilly, president of the Chicago Council that did the survey, ``Americans feel secure, prosperous, and confident. They see the US as the world's most important and powerful country.

``Americans view economic rather than military power as the most significant measure of global strength...They support measures to thwart terrorists, prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and keep defence strong...American public and leadership opinion on foreign policy today reflects a `guarded engagement' by a largely satisfied superpower.''

Remember Pokharan? Nearly 25 years after it first tested a nuclear weapon in 1974 -- about the same time the Chicago Council did its first survey -- New Delhi decided last May to test the limits of atomic power. In the past 25 years, as the US conducted hundreds of tests -- simultaneously tasting the fruits of economic growth -- India seemed to have stood still, or moved laterally, on bothcounts. A fortnight ago, two Western newspapers accused this country of suffering from ``too much democracy''.

Philip Marlowe, that ace writer and gentleman, would unlikely have been as harsh. Hot or cold, he would have enjoyed the difference.