An article in Times before the arrival of Obama!! - Nice
Our laying out the red carpet to greet an American President not so hot on his own turf has to be the most slavish display of hospitality ever. We thought we were subservient and this, like pink gins in the afternoon and coffee after dinner, was an old Raj hangover from which generations post Independence had not got over. But what we are seeing in the run-up to Air Force One bringing Obama plus 3,000 today is not just the city bending over backward to welcome a visiting head of state, but well, embarrassingly also forward. And that kind of hurts. Not just because it comes at a time when we want to be by ourselves, for Diwali is meant to be celebrated with family and friends, and certainly not with an unwelcome guest who plays spoilsport at the party. Or because we find parts of the city, yes — aamchi Mumbai, out of bounds for our festive weekend and ourselves declared persona non grata at Gateway of India for the nightly fireworks. That too, perhaps with a stiff upper lip — another English hand-me-down to the long-suffering Indian, we might have accepted in silence. After all, a guest is a guest, and we are known to be a tolerant people.
If we can grit the teeth and bear a 50-car cavalcade holding up peak hour traffic as it rushes President Pratibha Patil to Raj Bhavan for dinner, then we can clench the fists as the Obama juggernaut hurtles through silent and deserted roads with flashing lights and wailing sirens. No, what has caused the iron to enter our soul is this servile deference of a city getting dressed up and having nowhere to go because its date for the weekend is a man who will hop from one bullet-proofed and sanitised venue to another without so much as a glance at the preparations that have gone into making him feel important. Yes, you couldn't have missed it this week, a workforce of labourers toiling in the sun to paint dividers, scrub kerbsides, wash roads, fill up potholes, plant trees, shine traffic lights, re-tar flyovers and give Mumbai an avatar that would have RK Laxman's common man gaping in awe because the last time he saw the city like this, was never. And the question uppermost on the poor fellow's mind would be, but what about me? Why am I, the poor tax payer, the cheated voter, not given these basic amenities the rest of the year? What have I done not to deserve this? If it's good for Barack Obama, then it's good enough for me. And I, too, would like to live in a city that Nana Chudasama and Chhagan Bhujbal once promised would be "sundar Mumbai, swaccha Mumbai". For which, of course, there is no answer.
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