Mega chhaye

It was raining heavily the day a baby girl was born to Fatimawati and Sukarno in the late 1940s, and on hand to share the joy and celebration was Biju Patnaik — sent by Nehru to unnerve the Dutch colonialists who ruled over Indonesia till 1948. Biju flew his own plane, and soon became a good friend of Sukarno (who hailed from east Java and whose mother was Hindu) and gave Megawati her name when she was born. ‘Megawati’, of course, means ‘of the clouds’ and ‘Sukarnoputri’ what it should, ‘Sukarno’s daughter.’

So when Megawati became Indonesia’s latest President last week, the Indian connection with Indonesia became just a little bit stronger. Both countries are multi-ethnic democracies, with mind-bending varieties of people, languages, customs, rituals that are an anthropologist’s dream come true. Predominantly Muslim Indonesia (India has the world’s second largest Muslim population after Indonesia) has integrated its Hindu side to form a democratic palimpsest that is quite unique in the world.

But that’s not the end of the Indian link with Megawati — evidently, in the mid-1990s, Vinod Pande, once VP Singh’s Cabinet Secretary and now governor of Bihar who has leant heavily in favour of astrology, read Megawati’s horoscope and predicted that in about 5-6 years time the people of Indonesia would be singing, ‘‘Allah Megha de’’...

K-word returns

MUSHARRAF wants Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir, the PM may have thought with a smile, well let’s give him Omar Abdullah!

So the K-word returned with a vengeance to the Foreign Office as Abdullah took over as minister of state last week. The 31-year-old minister, who has been given key posts such as the Gulf division — which was taken away by Jaswant Singh when Ajit Panja quit the government and not givearlier in the year. In the MEA he looks after other key divisions such as Haj, Africa, Latin America, Administration, Establishment, South, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka Myanmar, etc. So what’s the first word by diehard, hard-to-please foreign officewallahs on Abdullah: Impressive!

Where Dawood lives

THERE’S all kinds of speculation about what exactly L K Advani told Pervez Musharraf over lunch in Delhi before Agra: did he or didn’t he talk about India’s keenness to sign an extradition treaty with Pakistan so that wanted criminals like Dawood Ibrahim could be returned home? According to one story, Musharraf said he was not particularly aware of Dawood’s whereabouts. But it’’s known that Dawood has a house in the posh Clifton area in and guess what — his house is said to be only about three houses away from where Musharraf’s home stands.

Nepal calling

THE big rumour is that New Delhi is sending a political appointee to Nepal when current ambassador Deb Mukherjee retires in November. His name is IP Singh and he’s a former diplomat, currently in the foreign affairs cell of the BJP - where a lot of retired diplomats have recently found their way in recent times.