Ripples on the brain

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the ambassador of United States to India, David Mulford and please welcome George W. Bush, President, United States of America”, an American voice said over the microphone marking the culmination of all the preparations we went through to welcome Bush, probably the most hated politician in the world today. A week of preparation, a day of complete restrictions marked his arrival. I wanted to write about this episode quite sometime ago, but missed it somehow. So here’s the whole week that ended in ISB hosting President Bush.

Preparation
It was early morning one day when Bharani sent a mail to the whole batch pointing us to a news in rediff about the possibility of President Bush visiting ISB. The news was later confirmed with an official mail. Personnel from American Secret Service and Andhra Pradesh Police visited ISB every afternoon starting a week before the event, discussing the plan and modalities. We could see a lot constables having (I believe) OC food in our dining hall. Till the eleventh hour nothing was told to the students about the other details of the visit. We learnt from the newspapers that Bush was to meet entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneurship Association or some such thing which even we hadn’t heard of.

The day before the event Police Commissioner of Hyderabad addressed all the students in a dignified and appreciable manner. He said that irrespective the political affiliations/inclinations, Bush is a state guest and he had to treated like one. The kind of security that had to provided to him was unimaginable and he requested the students to co-operate. I appreciate the way he spoke because students were incensed on account of the restrictions that were to be imposed on them for something they hadn’t asked for. And it had become apparent at that time that he was not going to converse with students from ISB but with people from outside. All this for the difficulties that the students had to go through. There was also some disappointment over the manner in which students were told about a handful of students who were selected to interact with him. For the standards that ISB had set in transparency with students on day-to-day affairs this was definitely a surprise, some students felt. The Commissioner understood the mood of the junta and hence pointed out the inevitability of the restrictions that were to be imposed.

The day before his arrival, classes were closed at 5:30pm, students were asked to vacate the main building so that complete check could be performed. Student willing to sit in the gallery to watch the man collected passes at 12 in the night.

The D-day
Students had to enter the main building and get themselves seated in the gallery before 11am. Wooden barricades were constructed in the atrium area and the whole place, where we roam around day in and day out looked alien to us, as if taken over by some other country’s soldiers. We couldn’t carry anything apart from the ID cards - no cellphones, books etc. The President was supposed to come at 1:30pm or so; hence we had to kill time till then. Unfortunately Raam and I had to sit separated from the gang and we were bored to some extent sitting doing nothing. And yes, many students decided not to attend the event and they had to remain confined to their rooms till the thing was over.

Suddenly, camera men and reporters were allowed into their allotted place. There were limited number of camera stands kept and these fellows had to run in to capture the best place and the camera stand. People who couldn’t come early had to carry the bulky camera on their shoulders for the entire duration. When we see the reporters on different news channels, we wish to be in their place. But believe me, from what I saw theirs is a dog’s life. Sometimes I feel why the events can be covered by a single camera and passed on to all news channels. Anyway such events are covered from one location only and I don’t see advantage of one camera man over the other.

The helicopters noise indicated that probably Bush’s arriving (his arrival was not 100% sure till the last minute). And then Mckinsey’s Rajat Gupta (who’s brain child is ISB and who is considered by the magazines as the person behind bringing Bush to Hyderabad and ISB) and Condy Rice took their positions. The people who were to interact with Bush also took their chairs. Then came the announcement above and Bush walked down with his characteristic wave to the crowd. He gave a short introduction and threw open the floor to questions.

Bush’s answers
I should say that the quality of the questions were not very good. It was expected since the participants were over-awed by the personality before him. But I still feel that ISB students would have done a better job with the questioning. Bush’s answers were never to the point and for the initial few questions, he always started with a reference to the nuclear agreement the previous day.

I generally felt that he answered questions better than some of us expected (our expectations were obviously set by the media and some forwards about how stupid he was). He was very frank in some situations. Like when he answered a person who pointed out that his goods end up spending a week in American ports with “that must the case in LA because we are having a labour problem there” or when he talked about domestic pressures in the US that leads to subsidies or when he said, “I know the way decision making functions in India; you have a 13 party coalition and the PM has to take accomodate everyone. But that is not the way I make my decisions. I take decisions single-handedly and boldly” or in another instance when he said, “Americans are very decent and generous people. They get bad name around world mostly because of me” which made people laugh, but I guess he was sincere when he said it. He also mentioned how he grew up in Texas believing that America was invincible and the terrorist attack shocked him.

Some answers of his were seriously funny.
1. I was speaking to your President yesterday. He is “good guy” (Oh ya? Good guy?)
2. For one question, he gave a long answer and finally ended wondering from where he started off and why he came there (like the typical “naa enga irukken” or “mein kahan hoon” in Indian movies)
3. One person introduced himself as coming from a textile and media background. Bush reacted, “Good, you can dress well and act in movies”.
4. When he was talking about the need for political stability in emerging economies, he said “Minimizing risk gives you the maximum returns”. (Oh ya, I had got my finance fundas wrong)

Some questions were asking the same thing. I have set up this, this and this. It has the following benefits. How do you think the US can help such enterprises. These questions were funny because they expected US to fund an enterprise that was inconsequential and no different from several others like them. I was tempted to ask this question, “Mr. President, I own a potti kadai (small roadside shop) in Gummidipoondi. How do you think US government can help me” ! Dei avangalukku vera vela illenu nenaicheengala da?