The continuities and breaks in the history of Russian power show up in different ways.

Within the red walls of Moscow’s Kremlin, a short walk away from the Grand Kremlin Palace, where the Russian President receives his state guests, is the Tsar Bell. At more than 100 tonnes, it was constructed more than 300 years ago and continues to be the world’s biggest bell. Various mishaps meant it never rang, and that even its commemorative earthbound version suffered an accident and a chunk lies aside, detached.

An impromptu guide to the magnificence of the architecture of the Kremlin says that in Soviet times there was a joke that nothing of the Tsars worked. That was then, she laughs.

President Pratibha Patil and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reached for the past in different ways as they dwelt upon the long-time relationship that sustains attempts today to increase bilateral trade between the two countries and to consolidate a strategic partnership.

At a luncheon hosted by Medvedev in the much mirrored and ornate St Alexander Hall, the Russian Presidential Orchestra struck up a “melody from the Indian movie Mister 420 and drew applause. Medvedev referred to the reaches of the bilateral past, all the way to the 16th century when Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin “became one of the first Europeans to visit India”, and to more recent times and a “source of artistic inspiration” for writers like Pushkin and Tolstoy.

Patil said: “We have long been familiar with the slogan Hindi-Rusi bhai bhai, made popular by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev.”

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