Once I was summoned by him to brief him on the performance of PSUs. The cultural item was a Bollywood dance by the daughter of a friend of the ambassador. His government fell sooner than that. That lost opportunity still makes my mouth water. When you are abroad, the last place you want to go is an Indian embassy dinner. No booze, not even wines in gallon jars. I was ushered out. Where I got room service to send up a nice, small, single malt and some fish which were swimming in the bay less than 24 hours earlier. The art of good conversation is near dead among our diplomats. The Indian ambassador in Germany recently hosted a group of us in Frankfurt for the ADB conference to a brilliant lunch in a nice hotel. Most PMs I have broken bread with were indifferent to food, with the exception of Atal Behari Vajpayee. The food was the usual around-the-corner Indian restaurant stuff. But worse was the conversation.This kind of dinner is par for the course, except when you are in a city where there is no embassy and just a consulate.

We ate while he extolled the virtues of each item as he insisted I have some more. When I arrived at 7 RCR, I was promptly ushered into his living room. Most of them will keep telling you about all the wonderful things they did to retrieve the relationship from the China instant heating water faucet Manufacturers drains where the previous envoy put them. The food is rate contract stuff and you always get an uneasy feeling that somebody is making money, or all the good stuff has been interdicted before it reached the pantry. He loved good food. They had chips and white bread cheese sandwiches with Joey Gallo wine in gallon jugs, Tropicana orange juice in tetrapack containers served in styrofoam cups and paper plates.But what I could not get over was the shiny packets of Haldiram bhujiya that were kept in corners as light eats with the liquor. He was a good host. Some of the crockery had seen better days and cutlery was mixed and has just come from under the tap.But the food was something.Bad food apart, you have to listen to the empty boasts of ambassadors who are near or past their use-by date. It probably has something to do with the IFS (B) staffers in embassies who apparently have a weakness for rate contractual arrangements.

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