Feisty Najma equals 10 men

THE feisty and irreverent Najma Heptullah must make one of the most colourful ambassadors of India abroad, but she also never ceases to amaze her colleagues at home! Tramping through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Sudan recently, in an effort to explain New Delhi’s compulsions with Pakistan, Najma affectionately told the venerable Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that here she was again in Riyadh, although she had so often been told that the Saudis did not particularly approve of women. The gallant Abdullah admirably rose to the challenge and pronounced her the equivalent of ten men!

Again in Kuwait, she went and sat down in the Speaker’s chair, just as it is her wont in the Rajya Sabha at home, fully aware that the Kuwaiti Parliament has so far refused to grant women the right to vote.

That wasn’t all, though, as the hapless all-male parliamentary delegation which was supposed to accompany her to Riyadh, will tell you. Evidently, Najma picked up the PM’s letter for the Saudi King and flew off to Jeddah, having organised her own visa to Saudi Arabia. When the parliamentarians called the PMO to ask for the PM’s letter, so that they could get their own visa, they were told Najma had already taken it. Left high and dry, the crestfallen MPs had to settle for the trip to Kuwait and Sudan.

Irresistible Klebanov

THE dour Russian got a makeover a long, long time ago, in fact very soon after the Soviet Union disintegrated at the end of 1991, and it seems high time the average Indian figured that out (believe it or not, journalists visiting Moscow even in the mid-1990s were asking what Mikhail Gorbachev was doing). Independent Russia’s first PM Yegor Gaidar set the tone of an all new, all hip Russia, when — apart from impoverishing the nation by freeing the rouble overnight and linking it to the dollar — he ordered the Russian delegation travelling to Paris for credit talks to be fitted out in Armani suits.

Soon, everybody who could afford to in Russia was bingeing madly, shopping compulsively and travelling with dedicated intent. Not that — not by a long, long shot — is Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov cut from the same cloth as Gaidar. In town for talks on tanks, fighter planes and submarines as well as bilateral trade, the St. Petersburger in Klebanov is said to have found not only the food in the Maurya Sheraton’s Bali Hi restaurant great, but the live band there irresistible. What with the vodka flowing — even if many Russians today are beginning to favour that British import, whisky — Klebanov decided it was time to shake off the tedium of work and got up to shake a leg.

A few months ago, the Bukhara in the Maurya got itself a placard which read: ‘‘Bill Clinton sat here’’. Word is out that the Bali Hi might now do a Klebanov to match.

Vajpayee’s date with Bali, Phuket

IT’S time for yet another Commonwealth talk shop summit, this time in the evocatively-sounding Koolum, just outside Brisbane in Australia, and expectedly, PM Vajpayee will use the occasion to brief his colleagues about terrorism, Pakistan and Kashmir, not necessarily in that order. Air India One will take off as soon as the presentation of the Budget is over on February 28, since the summit is on from March 1-3.

Now comes the interesting part. The PM’s itinerary takes him to Bali, again, for a brief transit halt, since the plane cannot physically fly the distance to Oz in one, uninterrupted shot. Vajpayee is believed to have enjoyed his brief Balinese holiday while on a visit to Indonesia last year. But no beach sessions this time as the delegation is going to be lodged in some airport hotel during the refuelling halt.

Not so on the way back, however. Vajpayee will return home via Phuket, the best known seaside destination in Thailand, and none other than Thaksin Shinawatra, the blockbuster businessman-turned-Thai PM has promised to turn up to see him. Shinawatra was here in town some days ago, to personally apologise for the ill Queen’s inability to keep her date with India. Seems India-Thai friendship is going places.

Former King to return home

THE former King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, may have been summarily removed by his egalitarian-minded countryfolk in 1973, but the wheel may have finally turned full circle. There is actual nostalgia in the mother country for those simpler times, when ideas rather than gunshot rent the air and Kabuliwallahs were proud of their independent-mindedness.

Shah has lived in Rome for the last 30 years, even as the Americans, attempting to broker a post-Taliban administration for the last many months tried to reinstall him in Kabul. Of course the Northern Alliance forestalled that event, but nevertheless, the ex-King is now all set to return home on March 21. The Italian government will provide a plane and fly him back. With Kabul in a shambles, it remains to be seen how long Zahir Shah will remain there.

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