It must have undoubtedly been the most coveted invitation in the country — an invite to have dinner with US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s 7, Race Course residence here on Sunday. All in all, the evening appeared to have gone off well with the Obamas treated to an Indian vegetarian and non-vegetarian spread and some vintage Bollywood music too.
Remarked one guest, “It was a very diverse group but it was very well organised. Every little detail had been planned including the music.” The musical offering was as varied as the food. So there was Sare Jahan Se Achcha, Vaishnav Jan Toh, a composition in Raga Saraswati to even the 1960’s popular Hindi song Ae Meri Zohra Jabeen, Tujhko Maloom Nahin....’.
Other than the Prime Minister and his wife Gursharan Kaur, others who got to occupy seats at the high table occupied by the Obama couple were UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi. Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee too had been allotted a seat at this high table. While Mrs Gandhi wore a silk sari and unusually for her even sported dangling ear-rings, son Rahul chose to stick to his politician’s attire of a white kurta-pajama.
But not as though the other guests who didn’t get to be at the high table felt left out. For each of the 50-odd invitees at the dinner got to shake hands as well as exchange a few words with both the President and his wife before the dinner began. In a sort of winding U-shaped line, they waited as the Obamas went about meeting them and exchanging pleasantries with them. The PM also introduced his daughters and sons-in-law to the Obamas at the dinner.
The guests were seated at different tables, each of which had been given a name of prominent Americans or Indian-Americans Norman Borlaug table named after agronomist Norman Borlaug to the Chawla table named after Indian-American astronaut, the late Kalpana Chawla. Yet another table was called the Khorana table after the late Indian-American scientist Hargobindg Khorana while economist John Kenneth Galbraith who had a long association with India which went beyond his years as an American ambassador here, too had a table named after him.
As the guests dug into a varied fare of jumbo prawns, sole fish, and leg of lamb — Mr Obama relishes lamb legs — for the vegetarians and vegetarian kebabs, rice with bundi among other things for he vegetarians — a BSF camel band played music in the background.
As for the guests — a mix of politicians, industrialists, actors, environmentalists, sportsmen, journalists — most couldn’t stop beaming from ear to ear, having got the invite to the very select gathering held in the sprawling lawns of 7, RCR.
Among those present were industry honchos Azim Premji, Ratan Tata, Anu Aga and Swati Piramal. From Bollywood came Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, Aamir Khan, A.R. Rahman and Shekhar Kapoor while chess grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand too was present.
Apart from some senior Union ministers like P. Chidambaram, A.K. Antony and Sharad Pawar, young MPs like Priya Dutt, Meenakshi Natrajan, Kanimozhi and Harsimrat Kaur too had been invited.
The Opposition BJP was represented by senior leaders L.K. Advani and Arun Jaitley.