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Friday, February 18, 2005
Straw on the ground
Rediff has a couple of pictures of Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, rolling chapatis at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and then eating the food cooked there. He looks distinctly uncomfortable in the second of the pictures, sitting cross-legged on the floor. It's a fine gesture on his part – diplomacy is full of such fine, and empty, gestures – but not on the part of his hosts. They should have got Straw a chair to sit on. Do they really want his abiding memory of India to be a post-meal ache in the thighs?
Update: Ajay Srinivasan writes in:
Good point.
Update: Ajay Srinivasan writes in:
Good diplomacy is also in conforming to the host country's customs. Intentionally or unintentionally, by sitting on the ground he has caught your attention and got you to think sympathetically about him, hasn't he?
What I am trying to say is that he could have been offered a chair and he could have opted to sit on the ground. In that case, kudos to him.
Good point.
