In fact, the one thing Manmohan and Musharraf may privately share a laugh over — if they have a one-on-one — is what the two of them are doing in such a Kumbh mela of anti-Americanism. This, when both will get back to the real world immediately after this summit. Musharraf goes straight to Washington to check out his progress report, if not his political angiogram, with Bush.

Manmohan returns home to pick up the thread on the nuclear deal, the most important point on India’s foreign policy agenda. Then he waits to read the despatches from his embassy in Washington on how firmly Bush spoke with Musharraf on keeping his promise on infiltration, on shedding his uniform and taking the promised steps towards restoration of democracy next year. Domestically, he will be worrying about the increasing Al-Qaeda-isation of terrorism, with that organisation now having begun to find home-grown recruits. The last thing on mind will be the rhetoric of a Chavez, Castro or Ahmadinejad.

That is how much the world has changed. The Pakistanis will have their own view on it, but is it a good or bad thing for India that the Cold War is over and that, in a resultant unipolar world, it has a mutually beneficial relationship with the only superpower?

Everybody can probably agree that a unipolar world is a bad thing because it gives one nation too much power. But after that, you can choose one of the two different views of it. One, that it is a world that provides new opportunities for a country like India to rise as a middle-power, and fill some of the that vacuum, build our economic, diplomatic and military power, so that even if it remains a unipolar world, we rise to the stature we deserve by virtue of our size and stability. The other, that a unipolar world is unacceptable and we must unite to help another pole rise to balance it. That other pole can only be China. Like Soviet Union in the past, this second pole will also be the underdog of this new, post-post-Cold War world order. In this, therefore, it would be entirely virtuous — and moral — for a new NAM to rise and be to China what it was to the Soviet Union. And in that formulation, where does India end up logically, but to be to tomorrow’s China what Cuba was to yesterday’s Soviet Union? Now go, seek a referendum from the people of India on that. Then you know why the only thing anybody here notices about Havana is that Manmohan and Musharraf may meet there. Will they just shake hands, or hug? If you are meanwhile stuck in a traffic jam on Delhi’s Josip Broz Tito Marg, keep honking, and cursing Sheila Dikshit.