After the dinner trays were cleared, most of us got busy writing our dispatches. The airhostess came, sat down in the empty seat next to me, and asked if she could read what I was typing. When, while reading my homage to the iconic leader for The Statesman, my paper then, she reached my brief reference to the Pakistani reaction to his death, she broke down. Rushing to the washroom, she came back composed, and said: “Sir, I am sure we cannot be enemies for ever”. I told her that these were exactly the words Nehru had used seven years earlier.
The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator