Move, King Clinton is coming

Move, King Clinton is coming
Amrita Shah

In all the festivals the maharajah played the central role. Along withthe other ladies of the Jaipur court, I watched these ceremonies from behindwindows of latticed stone and kept quiet about my great pride in the publicfigure that Jai presented. Dasehra, or Durgapuja as it was called in CoochBehar, was the most important festival of the year. Jai led the worship ofthe arms and weapons of war, and a special palace three miles away, usedonly for the Dasehra durbar.

The public ceremonies were perfectly organised, magnificent in appearanceand deeply, reassuringly impressive to Jai's subjects. The procession wasled off by troops, cavalry, bullock carts and camels, all accompanied bymilitary bands followed by Jai's personal bodyguards riding their matchedblack horses preceding Jai's own carriage. Behind him came the nobility onhorseback, wearing brocade costumes, their horses grandly caprisioned.

All along the royal route Jai received a tremendous ovation and peoplecrowded every window, balcony or lookout point to watch him and shout,"Maharaj Man Singhji ki Jai!"

-- Excerpt from A Princess Remembers by Gayatri Devi, wife of Jai Singh,the late maharaja of Jaipur.

In their zeal to ensure that the seven-hour special visit to Hyderabad onMarch 24 is hitch free, the police have begun picking up beggars and packingthem off to out of bound homes. `We have made provisions to keep around 3000beggars in state homes on the outskirts of the city till the visit is over,'said an additional municipal commissioner of the municipal corporation.''``In Mumbai near the stock exchange mounds of rubbish accumulated over atleast three months (have) disappeared overnight. The scra-wny shrubs andtrees have been painted in white and brown stripes. And the ha-wkers, thejuicewallahs, vada pavwallahs and pav bha- jiwallahs have been told to dothe Great Indian Vanishing tr-ick till after March 26.

So great apparently is Clintonbhai's clout that most of them havevoluntarily moved out.''

``During his stay in the capital the US president is likely to put up at theRs. 38,000 plus per day Chandragupta suite of the Maurya Sheraton. The 16thfloor suite –a complete apartment in itself with drawing, dining, threebedrooms, bar, kitchenette, terrace and fountain – has been freshlyrenovated and redesigned in shades of beige brown and peacockbl-ue...Flowers will be flown in from Ooty for the perfect Indian ambience.''``US security and fire officials along with their Indian counterpartsconduct a dummy rescue check on Tuesday at the Maurya Sheraton where the USpresident will be staying during his visit to New Delhi.''

``Hand crafted sheets, four-poster beds, bathrooms with sunken marble bathsand ba-sins glistening like mirrors luxury is a mild word for it. But onlythe best will do when the guest is the American president...The president'sentou-rage has booked the entire Oberoi owned Raj Vilas...Royal Villa whereClinton and his daughter will be staying, is a separate wing of the hotel.Many members of the entourage will stay in specially embroidered tents keptcool by 20 tonnes of air conditioning.... On the cards is a spot of tigersafari at Ranthambore...A senior protocol officer of the UP cadre did notfind the toilet on the premises (of the Taj Mahal) up to mark.

Tiles are now being placed to cover its PWD-style whitewashing...AlthoughBil-l's stopover at Agra is expected to be as brief as at Islamabad, themonuments will be sanitised and sealed for that duration.''

All newspaper reports on the impending visit by the American president toIndia. And why not? Why should the president and his daughter not spottigers at Ranthambore? (Given the declining tiger population they are notlikely to see anything but frolicking deer unless of course special effortsare made. But then that's another matter). Why should the Clintons not get ataste of Indian regal splendour? What is it after all but a small payoff forall the deprivations and hardship the world's most powerful man must endure.Why should one of the world's busiest men not stay in comfort? Why should henot be well protected or not be enabled to see the sights? Why should Indianot make an effort to present its best face to the world when it comesvisiting?

No reason at all. At the same time there are other questions that could beasked. Such as why should so much money be spent when a representative ofthe people goes visiting? What actions has the world's most important man(or his predecessors) taken that necessitate such an extensive securitycover? Why should the most powerful man on the globe not be up to witnessingsome poverty, a fact after all, in this multi-hued world? And why, most ofall, when a head of the world's second largest democracy comes calling onthe leader of the world's largest democracy should the people beinconvenienced? In the old days, kings performed rituals of pomp andceremony.

The aim was two-fold. Splendid rituals entertained and dazzled thecommoners. It also clearly marked out the differences, the specialprivileges and separate duties of the ruler and the ruled. Sometimes, itseems nothing has changed at all.