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L me summarise the Obama trip. I open the door to a man on my doorstep. He says, "I stopped by to say you're great. Everything you're doing is great. I wanted to say that as you become greater, I don't want to watch from the sidelines.
I want to be there, shoulder to shoulder, helping you get to even greater greatness than your greatness." There's a pause because I'm uncertain of what this man is doing in my house and so is he. "Thanks," I say tentatively. "Great, I'll be going then," he says and leaves.
As I try to fathom what that was about, a million television experts break down and analyse the meaning of every word, syntax and nuance. One chat show host asked, "Did Michelle win?" clearly turning a Presidential visit into sport.
The answer was even better. An image consultant replied, "No, him and Michelle came out as equals. I think they work well together (I think he realised they work well together as well, when, um, he asked to marry her?) That's a good decision to bring her."
The winning expert comment, though, was this: "He was wearing a blue tie to represent the colour of the Democrats. Democrats are blue". I urge the person who said this to perhaps look at the history of American Presidents and the colours of ties they have worn. He might make the shocking discovery, that unlike breaking up a nursery class ("Paresh's side is the green team. Varun onwards, blue team"), the highest office in the world is slightly more nuanced and may make tie decisions independent of geopolitical views.
Clearly, Obama's speech writers had a specific plan for the India visit. To make us feel nice. Someone must have said in Washington, "Indians love being told they're great". Added to the fact that it's Barack Obama, a man who can make a safety pin feel great, ("Never forget you're not just a safety pin.
You are the accumulation of a million pieces of struggling iron ore, whose forefathers for hundreds of years fought and died and endured hardship so today you could rise to take your rightful place in the sun holding up that sari") there was no doubt that he would bring the joint houses of parliament to its feet (including HD Devi Gowda who can barely walk).
Obama has done two things no one ever did before. No American President has ever addressed joint houses of Parliament. Through the year, the Parliament makes the nation cry, while he made parliamentarians cry.
There was much focus on our young population, with 700 million people under 30, what's positioned as apparently our great asset.
There are the (now almost cliched) notions of ambition, energy, change, restlessness that youth represents, thereby extrapolated to mean that these things are good to nation building. So it's good if the pillars of our future are demanding (and building) a new India every 20 minutes.
Apt thus for The President to choose a college. College courtyards, apart from centres of teenage romances are also, however scary that may sound, the nerve centre of where new India emerges.
Which is not to say that the stereotype of young ambition is not true. Young India is building the country -- they are flying our planes, running our malls and restaurants, managing our money, building our high-rises, creating the consumer middle class, managing America whose chores are almost entirely outsourced -- almost anything happening that makes us deserve 8.5 per cent.
But as with all things young, things are learnt on the fly -- through mistakes (speak to the relationship manager of any bank about investing. It's impossible to understand what they're saying. But it has many acronyms and sounds assured. Ask him/ her for the meaning and they have no idea. It's prepared elocution).
The nation doesn't have time to waste years preparing anyone for anything because this generation looks back to the past who spent their lives preparing, and nothing happened. Today's young want to get somewhere .
Perhaps some place looking like a love child of Manhattan and Noida. No one, however, will admit to not knowing- either the destination or the journey. As irony has it, in what we call the information age, time is far more valued than knowledge, and confidence reigns over content.
It is thus interesting that the world's oldest democracy and one of its most charismatic leaders in human history have chosen to bet on this Indian generation to lead the world into the future. And equally interesting that young and old pass judgment on a country that in a hundred years has given us pretty much every human invention of note (electricity, the computer, the internet, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the television, it goes on).
The President saw our pot holed roads, our decaying trains, our choked airports, our collapsing electricity grid, and continued saying we're great while listening to our lectures on how to improve his country.
"With great power comes great responsibility," President Obama said at some point, quoting Abe Lincoln, and I overheard a 20 year-old saying "Why is he quoting Spiderman, dude?" With great power also comes great patience. This is Anuvab Pal's last column. His book Disco Dancer hits bookstores early December.
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